E61 M5, 'Red Cog' with no symptoms.

[ecain63]

Skrambles said:

ecain63 said:

Skrambles said:

ecain63 said:

I think this is gonna be the problem when the E60's get down to £15k in a year or so. Ford Focus priced car with Ferrari bills. I bet most of the cheap ones won't be eligible for BMW warranty either. Sod that for a game of risk.

What are the criteria for the warranty? I can't imagine having an m5 without one.

It has to be either; still under 3 year manufacture warranty allowing you to extend, or; have a full BMW service history with less than 60k on the clock. After that its a no-go! You'd be amazed how cheap the warranty is too. I pay £89 a month for mine, fully comp with no excess. Audi wanted over £2500 a year for my RS6 (although the price was the same for any 4.2litre+ audi) under a similar scheme. No brainer!

I still reckon the later model M5's (06 on) are pretty bomb proof, but its the common niggles such as wiring, bushes, rods etc that will shock even the deepest pocket. This isn't an Aldi car, this is an M&S car! In fact its a Harrods car!

£89! That's ridiculously good value for an m5. I pay £95 for the x5 (with a 250 xs).

Glad you haven't lost the faith! It's a truly awesome car.

It is a truly amazing car. Very different to other cars ive owned. For some reason i still cant work out if its better than the equivalent cars ie. RS6, E55 / E63 etc, its just so very different. You have to forgive it for its lack of torque and its funny ways with the gearbox at low speeds (and that D mode is properly awfull) but when its in the 'zone' it really is a a car to be reckoned with. My RS6 was the fastest car to 60mph, even to 80mph i'd ever owned, reaching the benchmark figure in about 3.9s. But from 100mph up it felt it was wasting so much in drivetrain losses and would take an age to get above 160mph. It did have a bloody huge boot though. The E63's i drove last year were all very quick but they felt dangerous and unsophisticated. Any sign of damp, or heaven forbid ice, and the E63 is unusable, just too risky. The M5 struggles with scooby's and evos to 60mph which is a real pain in the ass when your in the market to test drive one and can leave you feeling a bit cold, but once you have taken an M5 above 100 and floored it the whole thing makes sense. The handling is amazing for such a big car and the gearbox is just perfect, but its the high speed, Lambo and Ferrari crushing acceleration that astounds you. It really is something to be experienced first hand.

All of these cars have expensive lives and niggles. The C5 RS6 had a chocolate gearbox that many owners could have changed twice during ownership at £7k a pop. Alternators and intercoolers are common faults with bills of over £2k for these repairs. The E63 and many other merc models have loads of sensor and electrical issues. Differentials are also an up and coming issue and are not a cheap affair. The M5 might have vanos problems on earlier cars and SMG faults on even older ones but these are part and parcel of owning a cutting edge car. It wasnt designed to be kind to your health.

If you want 'infallibly reliable' and 'cheap to run' you dont buy an M5. You dont even buy a BMW. Its not a marque for the penniless or a car for those who have more important things to pour money into. People that buy into the M5 name should be aware of this but sadly it attracts the broader spectrum of society. Car enthusiasts were its target audience when new and even now the price has come down they are still the target audience. But as we are now in the 'mondeo money' zone it will attract the 'ive managed to scrape a £20k loan to spend on a decent car and i like the image of the M5' crowd. What this crowd forgets is that this £20k car used to be £70k and as much as they might wish it, the servicing / maintenance costs havnt gone down in accordance with the value. Thats fine if the owner can afford it and has got a warranty but this is often not the case with the higher mileage, older models (which incidentaly are the ones with the expensive issues). Joe Bloggs will buy these examples and as a result will shaft the rest of us at resale. When it comes to its first service, insurance renewal or repair the owner cant stomach the cost and the £20k car becomes an £18k car with an additional 10k on the clock and work needing done. Q? Who buys it next? A! Joe Bloggs No.2. More hard mileage to impress his mates, less attention to the service indicators and hey presto another price drop. And so on.

Off that little rant. Yes this is a fantastic car, but it needs a BMW warranty. Get that right and so long as your willing to prop up the government with fuel duty and BMW with labour rates you'll have a blast. Get them while they are HOT!

[Skrambles]

ecain63 said:

Yes this is a fantastic car, but it needs a BMW warranty. Get that right and so long as your willing to prop up the government with fuel duty and BMW with labour rates you'll have a blast. Get them while they are HOT!

Still looking - I can't wait to get another one; this time it's got to be silverstone with black interior, 09 and fully loaded; meanwhile I'm working on persuading the other half that it's a necessity!

[isee]

I disagree with the deep pockets part.
My M6 has been one of the cheapest to maintain cars I've ever had and any and all expenditure has been predictable (fuel, insurance, servicing, tyres, oil and warranty). I renewed my warranty for £980 per year with zero excess. It just had some vanos work done quoted at 24hour labour cost plus parts. I am guessing that's at least £3k right there. Cost to me? - zero.

Unlike my x-reg bmw 330i that I bought for £4500 then spent another £4500 over the next year because minor and minor to medium things kept breaking down and everytime you think "alright I will get this sorted and then nothing more can go wrong"

What I did find shocking the other day though is insuring a lexus RX-400h was going to be £200 more than my M6.... all I could say was "WTF!?!"

[ecain63]

The point is you still have a warranty. If you didn't have that then the vanos repair would have cost you. Therefore, this car is an expensive car to maintain unless you have a warranty. That's the point I made and you just confirmed it.

[Skrambles]

What sort of (expensive) problems would the BMW warranty NOT pay for? I only had the idle actuators go on mine, which were covered, but were relatively minor items. I think I was quite lucky with my e46 m3 and my m5 as it was mostly routine stuff that needed doing.

[Skrambles]

isee said:

I disagree with the deep pockets part.
My M6 has been one of the cheapest to maintain cars I've ever had and any and all expenditure has been predictable (fuel, insurance, servicing, tyres, oil and warranty). I renewed my warranty for £980 per year with zero excess. It just had some vanos work done quoted at 24hour labour cost plus parts. I am guessing that's at least £3k right there. Cost to me? - zero.

Unlike my x-reg bmw 330i that I bought for £4500 then spent another £4500 over the next year because minor and minor to medium things kept breaking down and everytime you think "alright I will get this sorted and then nothing more can go wrong"

What I did find shocking the other day though is insuring a lexus RX-400h was going to be £200 more than my M6.... all I could say was "WTF!?!"

General running costs are very reasonable on the M cars, when compared to Porsche, Lambo or Ferrari, or even VW (considering what you've got! But when things go wrong the costs get very scary very quickly if you don't have a warranty. That's also true of the non-M bimmers, like my x5 which had its valvetronic levers replaced last year (out of warranty - a mistake I'll never repeat): BMW Ruxley quoted £7000 , but the good folks at BMW Cooper Sevenoaks did it for £2k - still a lot of money and every time it's been serviced I've been lucky to walk away with change from £1,000.

[isee]

ecain63 said:

The point is you still have a warranty. If you didn't have that then the vanos repair would have cost you. Therefore, this car is an expensive car to maintain unless you have a warranty. That's the point I made and you just confirmed it.

Ah... well I guess we are in complete agreement then

[ecain63]

Anything that would be classed as normal wear and tear.

[thegreatdogwood]

ecain63 said:

Anything that would be classed as normal wear and tear.

Yup, things like front discs and pads on M5's / M6's are the bills that hurt as non-warranty items that are mutiples of non-M series equivalents. First thing to check when looking at buying used