Sub £5k e60, should I? And buying advice!

[eltax91]

Hi all

I'm looking for a daily work hack to tour the motorways of Britain and my eyes have glanced to the e39 and e60 5 series amongst others. For car allowance reasons it must be over 2000cc petrol, so looking at 525i or 530i of either.

So, firstly, is the e60 going to be too ropey at this budget? I seem to be able to find one on 100k ish and with some haggling would see one into my budget easy enough.

I'm happy with either auto or manual, both have equal plus sides for me. What are the autos like for reliability? In fact, how reliable is the car in general?

Am I mad then? And if not, buying advice? Any know issues I should watch out for?

Cheers all

[eltax91]

Bump

[eltax91]

Nobody ever touched an e60 then?

[farbbm]

I've got a 2005 525d Msport, not a pertol but I can give you my experience as I've had it since it was 14 months old. There's no reason to think that a car with a 100k on it should feel ropey, mines done 77k and still feels tight although I'll admit I do feel it's not as well built as my previous E39. In fact when I was a specialist the other week they had an E60 with 335k mile on the clock and that did look tired. I'd suggest getting the transmission fluid changed as although BMW claim they're sealed for life the transmission will feel better for it. Also check the tyres, if it still has run flats on it they will give a fairly hard ride and will be expensive to replace so check to make sure it's got good ones, also the service history is a must whether from BMW or a reputable specialist as these are pretty technical cars and do require software updates form time to time. It's also worth checking through the I drive to see what the next service items are, you can scroll through looking at when the next oil service is due, vehilce insepction and when the brakes are due a change along with some other items .

A faily generic experience but if you have any more specific questions then please just ask.