UK - Category D BMW 535D Touring Purchase - Good Idea??

[ch3ng]

Hi,

I've recently been interested in buying a 05 Plate 535D M Sport Touring, in great condition, 65k miles on the clock.

Specs are: Leather, Logic 7 Hifi, Xenon/Adaptive Headlights, Privacy Glass, Pro Nav, Powered Boot, fully loaded.

Mechanically the car is perfect and there are no problems, cosmetically it's perfect too. I value the car at 15-16k probably.

The car seller has agreed to sell the car at 11k, but only today it came to my and his attention that the car was sold to him as a 'category D' write off. The car had a few issues but they have all been fixed and the car is running sweetly! He was unaware of when he bought the car from a third party dealer it was a Cat D.

If I buy the car for 11,000 - am I being stupid? The car is fantastic value compared to anything else on the market. But I'm wary of the Cat D for resale and potential insurance/other issues!

I can still wait - I'm not THAT desperate to buy. But I've been getting all excited all week over this and then I did the HPI check!

What do people think? Stay clear or is cat D not a problem? And how much does cat D reduce the value by? I hear anything up to 50%? Cheers!

[Dave Hedgehog]

for me it depends on the reason for the CAT D, crash damage and i would not be interested, light vandalism, stolen recovered etc and it would not bother me

it will hit resale but if you plan to keep it and run it into the ground thats not an issue

[Fox-]

You value a 7 year old 5 Series at 16k? Is there gold bullion in the boot?

[DavidHM]

Fox- said:

You value a 7 year old 5 Series at 16k? Is there gold bullion in the boot?

Seems to be a 12k car before the Cat D is taken off and that's if you even want an early 535d; I'd personally be going for an LCI 530d SE at the same mileage and money. Okay, it's not quite as epically fast but it's within 10% on power and the interior is a much nicer place to be, even before you take the economy into consideration.

[ch3ng]

Apparently water damage to the engine due to a deep puddle causing water to be drawn in. How much would you value the car then? Most of the classifieds on here have 2005/6 Tourings for 13-15k with 60-70 on the clock!

[avocado]

So was the engine replaced?

[Thom987]

8/9k

[n0v0s]

Who buys a car worth that much without doing a hpi check?! BULLst, he must've known it was a cat D..

IF submersed in water, then there could be a whole load of electrical nasties waiting to crop up in future, depending on how deep/how long it was submerged for and what type of water it was.

[FloppyRaccoon]

Dave Hedgehog said:

for me it depends on the reason for the CAT D, crash damage and i would not be interested, light vandalism, stolen recovered etc and it would not bother me

it will hit resale but if you plan to keep it and run it into the ground thats not an issue

I would tend to agree with this, things can get written off for some daft reasons. Light crash damage I could deal with, but I'd want details/pics of repair. As Dave said, if you run it it for long enough it won't really matter.