How much should I pay?
Discussion
Thought I'd throw my two pennies in here..
I picked up an 02 530i Sport in silver with black leather with Nav, auto, heated seats and front park sensors. Had a genuine 63k on the clock and full BMW service history and the final invoice being at a specialist. Nice tidy car with two green service lights on - not a show car as it has a couple of very light bumper scuffs but better than I expected at this price. I paid £7k all in after some haggling.
Best £7k I ever spent. Its a huge amount of car for the money and as my daily hack is just perfect. No squeaks or rattles and feels fit for every one of it's 231bhp when you open the taps. It even averaged 36.2 mpg on a NSL run back from Cornwall.
Good luck in your hunt.
Cheers,
Matt
I picked up an 02 530i Sport in silver with black leather with Nav, auto, heated seats and front park sensors. Had a genuine 63k on the clock and full BMW service history and the final invoice being at a specialist. Nice tidy car with two green service lights on - not a show car as it has a couple of very light bumper scuffs but better than I expected at this price. I paid £7k all in after some haggling.
Best £7k I ever spent. Its a huge amount of car for the money and as my daily hack is just perfect. No squeaks or rattles and feels fit for every one of it's 231bhp when you open the taps. It even averaged 36.2 mpg on a NSL run back from Cornwall.
Good luck in your hunt.
Cheers,
Matt
I spent over 6 months looking for my 540i Touring and ended up going to Bognor Regis (twice on successive weekends) to buy it. Edinburgh's a nice place, good excuse to have a weekend away and then you wouldn't feel it was totally wasted if you weren't sure about the car.
Don't bother upgrading the light and grille - lights alone will cost £300+ and you may as well put that towards buying a 530i, which could only be a facelift model with the new lights and grille...
Don't bother upgrading the light and grille - lights alone will cost £300+ and you may as well put that towards buying a 530i, which could only be a facelift model with the new lights and grille...
[TW]Fox said:
This is the problem I found. They all look nice in the pictures but so many of them have been mistreated and look neglected.
The one that has just popped up doesn't look to bad. It's on its 4th owner but I guess its 9 years old so I kinda need to stop thinking thats the end of the world. Those tints set a few alarm bells ringing - they are not BMW factory fit ones, and are very dark. The front window ones are illegal. I'll leave you to stereotype the owners of limo-tinted BMW's
Certainly worth a look although don't forget with every 528i Sport budget an extra £500 for genuine Angel Eye front headlights and CELIS LED rear lights - really freshens up the car.
One good thing about the one in the advert is that it has Continental tyres on it. Now, these are not especially awesome tyres but they are reasonably expensive - I find tyres tell you a lot about a car. If it's got 4 Wan Li's on it then its likely similar corners have been cut elsewhere yet if the previous owner saw fit to throw in excess of 500 quids worth of tyres at the car I think its a pretty good sign.
As for mine, I've had mine a couple of years now so it cost quite a bit more and it's a 530i Sport rather than a 528i Sport but I absolutely love it. It always amazes me quite how solid, well built and generally decent it feels once I get back into it after driving supposedly much newer and 'better' cars.
I was ridiculously fussy when I bought mine and hence it took me 6 months to find the right one, and like you I kept coming across 'mint' examples which looked like a tramp had spent the last 2 years sleeping on the rear seats, etc etc. Eventually bought a car off its original owner in immaculate condition for no more money than the shabby ones on account of the fact it was the wrong side of 100k.
Interestingly when I was looking I found that the cars in the best condition were either the low mileage or the high mileage ones - most of the nasty ones were 'average' mileage. I can only assume this is becuase the low milers were hardly used, the high milers spent all their time on the Motorway carrying one person with no wear to the rest of the interior, no trolley dinks on the M4, etc etc whereas the 'average' mileage cars were family cars with all the marks and damage that brings with it..
And mine is Silver as well. To be honest I think its the best colour for them - they don't show swirlmarks etc like a black one does, and although polishing it isn't rewarding they almost always look smart.
Fantastic looking car. A friend of mine has one of these in blue; 530i sport. It looks equally good - just goes to show what great cars they are.The one that has just popped up doesn't look to bad. It's on its 4th owner but I guess its 9 years old so I kinda need to stop thinking thats the end of the world. Those tints set a few alarm bells ringing - they are not BMW factory fit ones, and are very dark. The front window ones are illegal. I'll leave you to stereotype the owners of limo-tinted BMW's
Certainly worth a look although don't forget with every 528i Sport budget an extra £500 for genuine Angel Eye front headlights and CELIS LED rear lights - really freshens up the car.
One good thing about the one in the advert is that it has Continental tyres on it. Now, these are not especially awesome tyres but they are reasonably expensive - I find tyres tell you a lot about a car. If it's got 4 Wan Li's on it then its likely similar corners have been cut elsewhere yet if the previous owner saw fit to throw in excess of 500 quids worth of tyres at the car I think its a pretty good sign.
As for mine, I've had mine a couple of years now so it cost quite a bit more and it's a 530i Sport rather than a 528i Sport but I absolutely love it. It always amazes me quite how solid, well built and generally decent it feels once I get back into it after driving supposedly much newer and 'better' cars.
I was ridiculously fussy when I bought mine and hence it took me 6 months to find the right one, and like you I kept coming across 'mint' examples which looked like a tramp had spent the last 2 years sleeping on the rear seats, etc etc. Eventually bought a car off its original owner in immaculate condition for no more money than the shabby ones on account of the fact it was the wrong side of 100k.
Interestingly when I was looking I found that the cars in the best condition were either the low mileage or the high mileage ones - most of the nasty ones were 'average' mileage. I can only assume this is becuase the low milers were hardly used, the high milers spent all their time on the Motorway carrying one person with no wear to the rest of the interior, no trolley dinks on the M4, etc etc whereas the 'average' mileage cars were family cars with all the marks and damage that brings with it..
And mine is Silver as well. To be honest I think its the best colour for them - they don't show swirlmarks etc like a black one does, and although polishing it isn't rewarding they almost always look smart.
Edited by [TW]Fox on Sunday 27th July 19:52
Totally agree.
I sold my 335i in the end as ultimately it was......well.......a little dull. An engineering marvel, but you just press the throttle and go, and that's it, the new 330i is actually far more satisfying.
It was the same with the 535d, a great all round car, and when remapped pretty quick, but my brothers 530i E39 is actually a more fun car.
I have spent the last couple of days trying out a few nice cars, including the new M3 and 335i manual coupe (my 335i touring was auto) and another E46 SMG M3, and out of all those I still think the E46 M3 is the most fun. There is something about a NA petrol.
I sold my 335i in the end as ultimately it was......well.......a little dull. An engineering marvel, but you just press the throttle and go, and that's it, the new 330i is actually far more satisfying.
It was the same with the 535d, a great all round car, and when remapped pretty quick, but my brothers 530i E39 is actually a more fun car.
I have spent the last couple of days trying out a few nice cars, including the new M3 and 335i manual coupe (my 335i touring was auto) and another E46 SMG M3, and out of all those I still think the E46 M3 is the most fun. There is something about a NA petrol.
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