Shed of the Week: BMW 528i

Rather better value than an Italian hire car says Shed, somewhat ruefully

Shed is on his holidays at the moment. Not only does this not prevent him from sending in his weekly contribution, it gives him the excuse to secrete himself away from Mrs Shed for a few hours and, through appropriate digital manipulation of his column, produce the emission you are looking at right now.

Now, when the object of the exercise is to discover and then discuss an appealing but also road-legal car priced below £1,000, you're bound to get some variation in quality from week to week. Sometimes the merits of a particular offering will need a fair amount of explaining.

But sometimes a car needs no additional en-puffery. Sometimes a car will speak for itself. This week's SOTW is a case in point.

If you were geekish enough to go through all the awards and magazine ratings given to cars launched over the last 50 years, it's a fair bet that BMW's 5 Series would be right up at the top of the heap. Within the 5 Series window of sporting executive excellence, the E39 is typically feted as the best version ever in terms of its all-round package of performance and build quality. And within that subset, the manual transmission 528 has a special desirability all of its own.

You can imagine the steam coming out of Shed's ears when he handed over more than the full asking price of this extremely clean 528i manual to the lady behind the Bari airport desk of Hertz in exchange for 10 days' hire of a Fiat Panda. A Fiat Panda so basic it doesn't even have air-con.

Would buying this BMW and driving it to Italy have been a better option than an Italian box with less grunt than an asthmatic water vole? Apart than the constant presence of Mrs Shed in the seat alongside him, what could have gone wrong for Shed if he'd gone up to Yorkshire and laid out that £750?

Well, they're great cars right enough, but it's not all peaches and cream. Despite the good build quality from new, the E39s did achieve a reputation further down the ownership line for certain issues.

The current owner has seemingly been pretty diligent on maintenance, but essential pre-trip checks for Shed would have included looking for signs of leakage from hoses and from the oil filter and rocker cover gaskets, and ensuring that the Check Engine warning light wasn't illuminated - which, along with any suspicious offbeat rattling most obvious at idle, might suggest a problem with leaking seals in the VANOS variable valve timing system. In pre-'99 sixes like this one it's a single rather than a double VANOS. The vendor's mention of recent crank and cam sensors could be good news in that it might mean he has already experienced and resolved a VANOS problem.

Shed would then be making sure that the windows all worked and that the seats didn't wobble unduly before rolling up his sleeves for a closer gander at the cooling system generally, plus the Bosch ABS module and PCV (crankcase ventilation valve).

Having done all that, he would be admiring the full service history, stainless exhaust and apparently unused toolkit and looking forward to a few years of thoroughbred Bavarian meister-motoring.

These are fast, comfortable and well-appointed cars, and handsome despite some of the fairly odd wood trim choices that BMW came up with. Besides the more commonly seen options, you could (in some markets at least) go for olive, poplar, a weird orangey stuff called Bruyere, a burgundy maple, and even a blue birch. Many of these could well be described as minging, but the polished Vavona option fitted to this car should be more than acceptable for most British tastes, even if the name itself sounds a bit like something someone once said in a pre-natal class.

After being ripped off for a renter on this year's hols, Mrs Shed has promised she may consider the idea of buying something to drive over to visit her relatives in Transylvania next year. With any luck she'll be on her own by then, so Shed couldn't really give a flying ball-joint either way. He'll be driving in the opposite direction in a SOTW like this.

Here's the ad.

BMW 528ise Rare Manual 1997 (R)

With 12 months MOT

Owned by BMW enthusiast (me) for last 4 years

Arctic Silver with contrasting
Full Silver leather (no rips/tears) with vavona trim
Low mileage for year, 138700miles
Front & rear armrests
Good brakes/tyres
Recent Bosch S4 Battery
All original tools/first aid kit/rechargeable torch in glovebox
Electric one touch windows front & rear
Remote central locking
BMW Alarm immobiliser
PAS
Onboard computer
Air conditioning (ice cold!)
Steering wheel rake adjustment
ABS
Driver/Passenger & Side airbags
Electric heated mirrors
Auto dimming rear view mirror
Business edition sound system (great sound) with 6 disc changer/cassette player hidden in dash
Private plate included
All original alloys (including spare) Jack and axel stand present
BMW locking wheel nuts with new key
In daily use and has been since Sep 2012 when I bought it
Had recent camshaft and crankshaft sensors
Micro filters recently changed
New spark plugs 4000 miles ago
New wiper arm linkage (Common fault)
New osf lower ball joint and anti roll bar link
New ignition barrel
New Power Steering hoses (Common fault - Due to age tend to split below reservoir)
Facelift lights/Angel Eyes (All genuine Hella units)
Clear side repeaters
Headlight washer jets
Rain sensitive wipers
Stainless steel exhaust
Full Service history/original leather folder with service book
Lots of receipts
Never been smoked in
No rust
Surprisingly economical on a run Hull>Liverpool & back £40!!
More pics available upon request

Negative points -

Light scratch down passenger side and couple of light dents/ripples barely visible (And you can't even see it in main pic!) easy repair if even bothered about it.

Very reluctant sale

Will miss the reliability of this and relatively low cost motoring of this BMW

Sold as seen

Must go due to arrival of new car (No room!!!)

Further reduced as insurance policy up for renewal on 24th Sept - MUST GO BEFORE THEN!!