(Yet Another) Silver BMW (E82 125i plus some history)
Discussion
Howdy Folks,
After many years of lurking on this part of the forum and admiring other people’s choices of wheels, I thought I would do a thread on my own personal pride and joy, my 2008 BMW 125i Coupé. I’ve had it for nearly 8 years now and over 105k miles, so got quite a bit to go over, so to keep things manageable I thought I’d break this down into chunks, covering stuff like buying it, road trips, maintenance, mods and loads of other stuff over a few posts.
First tho, just a little about me. Fairly safe to say I’m a big fan of BMW and have been since my dad got his first, an E36 325i in Glacier Blue back when the E36 was first released. Believe it or not I was actually quite upset as an 11 year old when I found this out, as I loved the Rover (416 GTi) he had at the time for it’s plush leather seats, electric windows in the back and zingy Honda Twin Cam engine. However, one quick hoon up a back road when we lived in France completely won me over as we passed all the locals with that straight 6 singing away. After that point I knew I’d end up having my own BMW one day.
Ran other cars when a poor student and a poor 20 something trying to figure out what to do in life, however in 2009 a couple of key things happened – got a new job, and sadly my father passed away, so I decided it was time to get my own. Going by how highly rated they were on here, I ended up in an E36 328i, which was, being generous, near the end of it’s useful life.
Rust on every panel and a few cooling system issues, final straw was when a van in Dudley took the front wing out, then on the way home the fuel gauge failed. I left it in with my indie to appraise whilst I was on a trip to the US, and when I returned he’d left an E46 330d on the drive as a courtesy car, with a small comment that it was for sale.
So next BMW was a 330d, which I covered about 50k in over 3 years. It was a great car to run to be fair, had been remapped so shifted, easy to get 45 – 50 mpg, great on the motorway and mostly reliable. Took it to all four corners of the country, including a very memorable trip to Aviemore and the North of Scotland.
Whilst the 330d was an incredibly efficient and comfortable car, I came to realise it was missing something. It was a bit of a pudding with that big heavy engine up front, and when the opportunity occurred to wring it out I was finding it a bit dull. I’d just had a car allowance and fuel card with very few limitations on what I could run (4 seats and less than 3 litres were the only rules), so I started looking at getting back into a petrol.
The last car my father had before passing away was an E91 325i, and I can still remember the first time he took me out in it – not the quickest thing BMW had ever done but that snarl as it went past 3000 rpm got stuck in my head, so with that, and great feedback on here around how reliable an engine it is, I decided to look for something with an N52 up front.
Yes, I started from the engine and worked backwards.
Oh and, given how long this intro is, aren’t you glad I’m breaking this into sections?
The Buying Process
So, armed with logins for PH and Auto Trader, I started my search. Stipulation of the finance company I was using was that it had to be post 2008, which basically limited me to a late 130i, a 125i Coupé or taking my chances on an N53 in a 3 Series. Decided I wanted a manual which limited me even more, so it didn’t take long to realise this wouldn’t be a quick search. Then, 4 weeks later on AT I saw an advert for the below:
It’s a 2008 BMW 125i Coupé, with the all-important manual box and a price I could deal with (£10.5k in 2014), so I booked the day off work and went down to Watford to have a look. Got there and it was being offered by an Audi Specialist, but not indicated in the advert were the fact it had Xenons (more on those later) and heated seats, and a very tasty audio upgrade fitted by the previous owner.
Only negative was a complete lack of service history for the first 40k of its life – which I still haven’t been able to locate – however the 330d had no service history at all, and I have a fairly cavalier attitude to most things in life, so I decided I would overlook that.
As you can probably tell from how long I’ve had it I got away with overlooking that part – but don’t try this at home kids.
So I paid a deposit and arranged to collect a week later. Got rid of the 330d, booked a one way ticket from Stafford to Watford for me and the wife – who hadn’t seen the car yet – and off we went to collect it. Signed the paperwork, and off we went on the way home.
Then, just to keep things interesting, about a mile outside the dealer I had a Tyre Pressure Warning light the dash up, to much taking of the Lord’s Name in vain and a very concerned wife. Managed to find a petrol station soon after, noticed the front left was only at about 21 PSI, pumped it up, and carried on our merry way. Rest of the journey was entirely uneventful just mooching up the M1 getting used to the car. Other than the tyre issue everything seemed in order, and that N52 up front confirmed exactly why I decided to buy the car. In fact at one point when we stopped off, I noticed that rather than humming the last song we listened to in the car as per usual, I was actually walking round a Service Station making brum brum noises in my head. Let’s not tell anyone that though shall we?
Anyway some pics from the way home:
And one from later that evening.
The Road Trips
After that I decided to just run it as it was to get used to it, so more road trips were the order of the day. In its first year it ended up in
Belgium
Amsterdam
And back to my old stomping ground (St Andrews)
And a few other places I didn’t get pictures of. Fair to say over those longer trips it really started to get under my skin – could never get enough of that engine as it was, but it was backed up by comfy seats, a fantastic stereo and decent handling – not perfect, but a massive improvement on my E46, more like my E36 if I’m honest. Outside Bruges I also discovered it sounds bloody brilliant in a tunnel
Turned out to be pretty decent on fuel also – this was after the Belgium/Amsterdam trip, at no point during which I was hanging around.
Only negative I could find at that point was that the ride was fairly appalling in town – especially on the cobbles in Bruges – which I would set about fixing when I got back. Initially thought about putting non runflats on, however my Indie noticed that the fronts were 6 years old at that point and were heavily cracked, so I went with another set of the dreaded RE050’s, which improved things somewhat, but it still wasn’t great. More to do, but I’ll cover that in a future post.
So yeah, to anyone still reading that’s the story of how I ended up buying a 125i and the road trips it was initially taken on. I’m now going to dig out my receipts so I can get a handle on the maintenance thing (I’m organised enough to keep the bills, not enough to remember off hand what I did).
Stay tuned for more waffle
After many years of lurking on this part of the forum and admiring other people’s choices of wheels, I thought I would do a thread on my own personal pride and joy, my 2008 BMW 125i Coupé. I’ve had it for nearly 8 years now and over 105k miles, so got quite a bit to go over, so to keep things manageable I thought I’d break this down into chunks, covering stuff like buying it, road trips, maintenance, mods and loads of other stuff over a few posts.
First tho, just a little about me. Fairly safe to say I’m a big fan of BMW and have been since my dad got his first, an E36 325i in Glacier Blue back when the E36 was first released. Believe it or not I was actually quite upset as an 11 year old when I found this out, as I loved the Rover (416 GTi) he had at the time for it’s plush leather seats, electric windows in the back and zingy Honda Twin Cam engine. However, one quick hoon up a back road when we lived in France completely won me over as we passed all the locals with that straight 6 singing away. After that point I knew I’d end up having my own BMW one day.
Ran other cars when a poor student and a poor 20 something trying to figure out what to do in life, however in 2009 a couple of key things happened – got a new job, and sadly my father passed away, so I decided it was time to get my own. Going by how highly rated they were on here, I ended up in an E36 328i, which was, being generous, near the end of it’s useful life.
Rust on every panel and a few cooling system issues, final straw was when a van in Dudley took the front wing out, then on the way home the fuel gauge failed. I left it in with my indie to appraise whilst I was on a trip to the US, and when I returned he’d left an E46 330d on the drive as a courtesy car, with a small comment that it was for sale.
So next BMW was a 330d, which I covered about 50k in over 3 years. It was a great car to run to be fair, had been remapped so shifted, easy to get 45 – 50 mpg, great on the motorway and mostly reliable. Took it to all four corners of the country, including a very memorable trip to Aviemore and the North of Scotland.
Whilst the 330d was an incredibly efficient and comfortable car, I came to realise it was missing something. It was a bit of a pudding with that big heavy engine up front, and when the opportunity occurred to wring it out I was finding it a bit dull. I’d just had a car allowance and fuel card with very few limitations on what I could run (4 seats and less than 3 litres were the only rules), so I started looking at getting back into a petrol.
The last car my father had before passing away was an E91 325i, and I can still remember the first time he took me out in it – not the quickest thing BMW had ever done but that snarl as it went past 3000 rpm got stuck in my head, so with that, and great feedback on here around how reliable an engine it is, I decided to look for something with an N52 up front.
Yes, I started from the engine and worked backwards.
Oh and, given how long this intro is, aren’t you glad I’m breaking this into sections?
The Buying Process
So, armed with logins for PH and Auto Trader, I started my search. Stipulation of the finance company I was using was that it had to be post 2008, which basically limited me to a late 130i, a 125i Coupé or taking my chances on an N53 in a 3 Series. Decided I wanted a manual which limited me even more, so it didn’t take long to realise this wouldn’t be a quick search. Then, 4 weeks later on AT I saw an advert for the below:
It’s a 2008 BMW 125i Coupé, with the all-important manual box and a price I could deal with (£10.5k in 2014), so I booked the day off work and went down to Watford to have a look. Got there and it was being offered by an Audi Specialist, but not indicated in the advert were the fact it had Xenons (more on those later) and heated seats, and a very tasty audio upgrade fitted by the previous owner.
Only negative was a complete lack of service history for the first 40k of its life – which I still haven’t been able to locate – however the 330d had no service history at all, and I have a fairly cavalier attitude to most things in life, so I decided I would overlook that.
As you can probably tell from how long I’ve had it I got away with overlooking that part – but don’t try this at home kids.
So I paid a deposit and arranged to collect a week later. Got rid of the 330d, booked a one way ticket from Stafford to Watford for me and the wife – who hadn’t seen the car yet – and off we went to collect it. Signed the paperwork, and off we went on the way home.
Then, just to keep things interesting, about a mile outside the dealer I had a Tyre Pressure Warning light the dash up, to much taking of the Lord’s Name in vain and a very concerned wife. Managed to find a petrol station soon after, noticed the front left was only at about 21 PSI, pumped it up, and carried on our merry way. Rest of the journey was entirely uneventful just mooching up the M1 getting used to the car. Other than the tyre issue everything seemed in order, and that N52 up front confirmed exactly why I decided to buy the car. In fact at one point when we stopped off, I noticed that rather than humming the last song we listened to in the car as per usual, I was actually walking round a Service Station making brum brum noises in my head. Let’s not tell anyone that though shall we?
Anyway some pics from the way home:
And one from later that evening.
The Road Trips
After that I decided to just run it as it was to get used to it, so more road trips were the order of the day. In its first year it ended up in
Belgium
Amsterdam
And back to my old stomping ground (St Andrews)
And a few other places I didn’t get pictures of. Fair to say over those longer trips it really started to get under my skin – could never get enough of that engine as it was, but it was backed up by comfy seats, a fantastic stereo and decent handling – not perfect, but a massive improvement on my E46, more like my E36 if I’m honest. Outside Bruges I also discovered it sounds bloody brilliant in a tunnel
Turned out to be pretty decent on fuel also – this was after the Belgium/Amsterdam trip, at no point during which I was hanging around.
Only negative I could find at that point was that the ride was fairly appalling in town – especially on the cobbles in Bruges – which I would set about fixing when I got back. Initially thought about putting non runflats on, however my Indie noticed that the fronts were 6 years old at that point and were heavily cracked, so I went with another set of the dreaded RE050’s, which improved things somewhat, but it still wasn’t great. More to do, but I’ll cover that in a future post.
So yeah, to anyone still reading that’s the story of how I ended up buying a 125i and the road trips it was initially taken on. I’m now going to dig out my receipts so I can get a handle on the maintenance thing (I’m organised enough to keep the bills, not enough to remember off hand what I did).
Stay tuned for more waffle
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