Ex Plod BMW mileage

[unclegrouch]

Just bouncing things around in my head, looking at potential replacements for my aged work donkey mondeo & had narrowed it down to a later mondeo TDCI (4-5 yrs old), maybe a Jag X type. Then i read a bit about the 5 series BMW's WOW !!!

I have always been a bit anti BMW, mainly because the price puts me off, especially for a work tool (I use an estate rather than a van, but it gets a fairly easy life, no heavy loads etc)

The 530d seems an awesome machine for my purposes & although I guess I will lose some of my 40mpg I get now, it would be worth it & the older E60's seem priced pretty well.

Nosing around the classifieds, auction sites & autotrader, I see a lot of ex police 530's - no surprise there.

It's the miles that really shocked me, most seem between 90k & 140k at 5-6 years old, WHY ???

Surely a double or treble shifted traffic car working 7 days a week must rack up some serious miles ??

I guess the automatic examples are city cars (to be avoided IMHO).

Why don't plod run them to 200k ??

I am hoping to find a 100k ish 06-08 car & expect it to last me 3-4 years and another 100k miles (the idea worked on my current mondeo, now on 202k)

Please enlighten me :-)

[alfabadass]

I think the Police only run cars up to 100k but it depends on the force...

[littleredrooster]

There's no TrafPol left to drive them. They sit around unwanted and unloved (cars - not TrafPol...)

[thunderbelmont]

Some forces run them for many more miles than that - cash strapped!!

I've seen a lot of "low mileage" cars appearing though Ex-Policecar.co.uk mostly Volvo T5s and now some T6s
When I bought my T5 back in 2008 it had low miles on it (114K - it's sister ship had 140K on it)
There are still forces buying Beemers, not all of them are un-loved.

Expect between 110K and 160K on it, which is pretty fair for three years work - especially with a lot of repmobiles/service engineer sheds doing stellar mileages in a couple of years, and they get Lease Company servicing ("are you sure it really needs it? let it develop...")

I've had three ex-Plodders and no bad experiences at all - one 3.0L Senator, an Omega MV6 Estate, and the T5.

[checkmate91]

I always thought the police sold cars at a year point or certain miles to maintain some sort of residual value for the asset. They even sell horse carcases for cash so every little helps...

They are well maintained, but not especially well loved (actually I think the horses are) and not much of a bargain, just representative of their condition.

Oh and surely low milage cars are city stters, big milage are motorway cruisers

[ben5732]

Got a T5 ex plod had 160k on the clock when I got it. Only problem with it was the heatermatrix which they replaced free of charge. Just check what force its from however, wouldn't get one from the met given the fact they are thrown around the city all day. Mine was ex north west motorway patrol so spend most of its life there. If you find one you like the look of stick the reg into google so you get an idea of if its been in rpu or not.
Edit: higher mileages on average are better than the lower mile cars I found they were constantly having issues looking at the service history or had been in a big smash.

Edited by ben5732 on Tuesday 4th December 20:58

[Six Fiend]

If you luck out you can get a driving school car - less likely to have been bent and not ragged on response

[checkmate91]

Hmm, my father bought an ex-Met driving school Rover 3500 in 1976 as he had driven it on the standard car course. I can't remember the mileage, but I think it was high but not excessive for the time. However it had had a replacement engine and the gear lever console had a screwed plate and sticker which said "no1 position blanked out". I remember him removing said plate and, lo and behold, no1 position was still there! I think it's fair to say that driving school cars don't just teach rookies how to drive and years-in trafpols how to do driving commentary.

And another thing. It was regularly hosed down underneath (the old man said he had to do it when using it), and with no underseal the fecking thing rusted like nobody's business underneath, was sold for scrap in 1986 (engine went into a kit car).

[wiliferus]

Partly will be due to warranty too. Each Force or consortium will have arranged a warranty as part of their contract with their chosen supplier - it's normally a parts only warranty then plod employ workshop mechanics. Once the car hits the warranty mileage they just get shot. TVP when they were exclusively Vauxhall got rid at 125k for that precise reason, regardless of the condition of the car.

As already mentioned, residuals come into it too - partly why some Forces are now using silver Pandas instead of white.

[unclegrouch]

Excellent replies, many thanks to all :-)

Still not sure about a ex-plod myself, although I guess most if not all of the 5 series estates would have been motorway cruisers, & more than likely driven harsh but fair ?? Certainly don't fancy an ex-met car that's spent it's life trying to flatten speed humps in the back alleys !

I tend to drive mine quite hard, but with some mercy (ex-hgv driver so tend to make the most of the available power without being brutal to the car). My mondeo was bought as a one owner "motorway" car @ 120k & has been an absolute gem - very few repairs, simple servicing from my mechanic Son & only let me down once when the lift pump died. I *should* have another mondeo but can't get the 530D out of my system :-)

[Matttracker]

we drive our astras and bmws in the met to sometimes stella miles, the astra I had the other day was on 130k. however I believe some of the traffic units, have an abundance of cars, more than one per 3 shifts, more like 1 for each shift, so the only get driven 7 hours per day, and a lolt of the time they are parked dealing with incidents or waiting.

I would be wary of expol cars just because although they are serviced a lot, they get hammered and they have the interiors ripped out and filled with electronics, then when its finsihed with its reversed, this must do some damage to the electronics.