The Spanish E53
Discussion
Buying a car in Spain is bloody nightmare... when I retired out here a few years ago I struck lucky and found a 2015 Focus with low miles (57k miles), FSH and at a main dealer, which massively simplified the purchase process.
Although a bit of a panic buy, the Focus turned out to be a good little car. Only a 1l Ecoboost, but drove well and cost nothing to run (€12.69 car tax, for example). Unfortunately it blotted it's copy book in the Spring this year when it tried to lunch its engine (those that have had this engine will know what I mean). Fortunately I caught it early and managed to get fixed at relatively low cost... but I'd lost faith in it and I really needed something bigger for airport runs and also to serve as a part time work van.
So 4 months ago I started looking for a new car. Ideally, I didn't want to spend much more than the Focus was worth (Spanish equivalent of WBAC offered c.€8.5k), and I really wanted a full size SUV or estate. I'd be confident of getting something pretty decent for that (£7-7.5k) in the UK, but the Spanish 2nd hand car market is completely bonkers... '07 E70/Q7/M Class start at €12-13k for cars with 2-300,000km. Very few estates around, so very little choice. Typically, Spanish cars are expensive, have massive miles, and are battered.
I looked at a couple of E70's in dealers, but as well as the crazy pricing the cars were shockingly badly prepared and the dealers gave zero confidence they would be standing by the '12 month guarantee' claims. Multi City dealers also want €400 deposit to bring a car from another site. But they do at least manage the transfer process for you.
Buying private here is far more complex than the UK, where you can find a car at the other end of the country, speak to the seller, then jump on public transport and go buy it and drive it home, fill in the V5 and away you go. Trains here might be clean, relatively fast and run on time, but you can't get anywhere... from Malaga (my nearest big city), I can pretty much only go to Madrid... from where I can't buy a car as the tax is different and it's very difficult to get the car transferred in to your ownership.
Ah yes, the ownership transfer process... the process to transfer ownership is so onerous people just pay a gestoria (like a solicitor/conveyancer) to manage it for them... a whole pile of documents from both buyer and seller are needed, with multiple signatures... there's also a tax to pay (4-8% of a nominal vehicle value), a registration fee, and a fee to the gestoria... its a wonder anyone bothers to buy cars privately, but in the end that's what I did.
I trawled the dealer sites, coches.es (Spanish Auto Trader), and Costa Del Sol Facebook market place for 3 months and found nothing, until late one Sunday night I saw an ad for an E53 on Facebook...
In English... ''BMW X5 in very good condition, low miles (73k), Nov 2005. Full history. New ITV (MOT), Cream leather. 3 owners.€7,450''. With a few pictures.
Hadn't considered an E53 as everything I'd seen had galactic miles unless they had the V8 petrol... discounted as I'd read could be a massive moneypit and fuel costs. But my wife did have an E53 as a company car back in 2005/6 and it we both liked it.
Sent the owner a message monday morning, and spoke to him later in the day. He was the third owner, had the car 2.5 years, knew both its previous owners personally, had a massive pile of bills and invoices for the car... which had been looked after it's entire life by the same mechanic... a German guy who's garage was on my local trading estate. So I popped down to chat to the mechanic... he repeated everything the owner had said. All sounded good so far so went to see the car the following morning... a 25 min drive away.
It was exactly as described... in very good nick for a 17 year old car. Went for a test drive and it felt OK... no creaks/groans,, quiet cabin, engine and gearbox felt strong, AC was OK, everything worked. Owner had a pile of documents for the car... original purchase invoice, every service, every repair, every ITV, every local tax receipt... few of the usual things like new door handles, but nothing major had broken on it. Issues? The tyres were legal, but suffering from age and multiple spanish summers, and were cracking... they would need replacing. Owner said he'd never been able to get his phone to connect to the bluetooth. Headunit screen was damaged. Drivers seat was very worn on the outside bolster. Headlights were very cloudy (mentioned on the recent ITV)... So nothing major, other than the tyres.
Offered the guy €6,500 on the basis I'd have to put 4 tyres on it (€550) and pay the ownership transfer costs (€450)... and shook hands.
Here it is today, a few weeks on... 2005, X5 3.0D, 114k km (71k miles) individual stratus grey (grey with a brownish/greenish tint depending on the light), individual walknappa leather in 'ecru', xenons, nav, sports front seats with memory. Stock 18's and SE suspension. Drives really well... usual BMW driving position and brilliant seats, a surprising turn of speed for something so heavy with only 218bhp, and as long as you're sensible on entry speeds, it can corner decently too... though the ride, even on SE suspension and chunky tyres can be tough. Spends most of it's time pottering around town or running to the airport on the cruise at 120kmh... doing 28mpg over 800miles so far.
|https://thumbsnap.com/ZtiVDN76[/url]
4 tyres went on the 1st week and transformed the way it drivers... steering is now a fair bit lighter and it feels a load nicer in the corners. I also replaced all the interior bulbs with LEDs and wet sanded/polished the headlights
[url]
It quickly became clear that the AC wasn't up to much - it was coolish, but was struggling to get the interior down to a sensible temperature, which is important when it's 30*+++ here every day for half the year, and the interior can be much hotter than that when the car's been stood out side... €50 to a local garage for a regas and its ice cold again.
I haven't had a good go at cleaning the interior yet as I have to decide what to do with the drivers seat... a new base is €1k, which i really don't want to spend, so I'm probably going to have to have a go at restoring it myself... need to find somewhere that can supply the correct colour dye... it will never be perfect, but It can be a lot better.
It took a some googling and a few tries, but I managed to get my iphone to work with the bluetooth... now I have to decide if I want to replace the headunit... a modern unit with car play, OBD, reversiing camera etc is c.€400... if I'm honest, it wouldn't really be needed as I only use the radio, but the current one does look its age...
Service indicator only has 2 lights on it, so it will need a service soon... will get the gearbox oil changed at the same time. And I'll machine polish it once all the summer visitors have gone.
Hopefully will last us many years to come and updates here will consist of making it better, not repairing it!
Although a bit of a panic buy, the Focus turned out to be a good little car. Only a 1l Ecoboost, but drove well and cost nothing to run (€12.69 car tax, for example). Unfortunately it blotted it's copy book in the Spring this year when it tried to lunch its engine (those that have had this engine will know what I mean). Fortunately I caught it early and managed to get fixed at relatively low cost... but I'd lost faith in it and I really needed something bigger for airport runs and also to serve as a part time work van.
So 4 months ago I started looking for a new car. Ideally, I didn't want to spend much more than the Focus was worth (Spanish equivalent of WBAC offered c.€8.5k), and I really wanted a full size SUV or estate. I'd be confident of getting something pretty decent for that (£7-7.5k) in the UK, but the Spanish 2nd hand car market is completely bonkers... '07 E70/Q7/M Class start at €12-13k for cars with 2-300,000km. Very few estates around, so very little choice. Typically, Spanish cars are expensive, have massive miles, and are battered.
I looked at a couple of E70's in dealers, but as well as the crazy pricing the cars were shockingly badly prepared and the dealers gave zero confidence they would be standing by the '12 month guarantee' claims. Multi City dealers also want €400 deposit to bring a car from another site. But they do at least manage the transfer process for you.
Buying private here is far more complex than the UK, where you can find a car at the other end of the country, speak to the seller, then jump on public transport and go buy it and drive it home, fill in the V5 and away you go. Trains here might be clean, relatively fast and run on time, but you can't get anywhere... from Malaga (my nearest big city), I can pretty much only go to Madrid... from where I can't buy a car as the tax is different and it's very difficult to get the car transferred in to your ownership.
Ah yes, the ownership transfer process... the process to transfer ownership is so onerous people just pay a gestoria (like a solicitor/conveyancer) to manage it for them... a whole pile of documents from both buyer and seller are needed, with multiple signatures... there's also a tax to pay (4-8% of a nominal vehicle value), a registration fee, and a fee to the gestoria... its a wonder anyone bothers to buy cars privately, but in the end that's what I did.
I trawled the dealer sites, coches.es (Spanish Auto Trader), and Costa Del Sol Facebook market place for 3 months and found nothing, until late one Sunday night I saw an ad for an E53 on Facebook...
In English... ''BMW X5 in very good condition, low miles (73k), Nov 2005. Full history. New ITV (MOT), Cream leather. 3 owners.€7,450''. With a few pictures.
Hadn't considered an E53 as everything I'd seen had galactic miles unless they had the V8 petrol... discounted as I'd read could be a massive moneypit and fuel costs. But my wife did have an E53 as a company car back in 2005/6 and it we both liked it.
Sent the owner a message monday morning, and spoke to him later in the day. He was the third owner, had the car 2.5 years, knew both its previous owners personally, had a massive pile of bills and invoices for the car... which had been looked after it's entire life by the same mechanic... a German guy who's garage was on my local trading estate. So I popped down to chat to the mechanic... he repeated everything the owner had said. All sounded good so far so went to see the car the following morning... a 25 min drive away.
It was exactly as described... in very good nick for a 17 year old car. Went for a test drive and it felt OK... no creaks/groans,, quiet cabin, engine and gearbox felt strong, AC was OK, everything worked. Owner had a pile of documents for the car... original purchase invoice, every service, every repair, every ITV, every local tax receipt... few of the usual things like new door handles, but nothing major had broken on it. Issues? The tyres were legal, but suffering from age and multiple spanish summers, and were cracking... they would need replacing. Owner said he'd never been able to get his phone to connect to the bluetooth. Headunit screen was damaged. Drivers seat was very worn on the outside bolster. Headlights were very cloudy (mentioned on the recent ITV)... So nothing major, other than the tyres.
Offered the guy €6,500 on the basis I'd have to put 4 tyres on it (€550) and pay the ownership transfer costs (€450)... and shook hands.
Here it is today, a few weeks on... 2005, X5 3.0D, 114k km (71k miles) individual stratus grey (grey with a brownish/greenish tint depending on the light), individual walknappa leather in 'ecru', xenons, nav, sports front seats with memory. Stock 18's and SE suspension. Drives really well... usual BMW driving position and brilliant seats, a surprising turn of speed for something so heavy with only 218bhp, and as long as you're sensible on entry speeds, it can corner decently too... though the ride, even on SE suspension and chunky tyres can be tough. Spends most of it's time pottering around town or running to the airport on the cruise at 120kmh... doing 28mpg over 800miles so far.
|https://thumbsnap.com/ZtiVDN76[/url]4 tyres went on the 1st week and transformed the way it drivers... steering is now a fair bit lighter and it feels a load nicer in the corners. I also replaced all the interior bulbs with LEDs and wet sanded/polished the headlights
[url]It quickly became clear that the AC wasn't up to much - it was coolish, but was struggling to get the interior down to a sensible temperature, which is important when it's 30*+++ here every day for half the year, and the interior can be much hotter than that when the car's been stood out side... €50 to a local garage for a regas and its ice cold again.
I haven't had a good go at cleaning the interior yet as I have to decide what to do with the drivers seat... a new base is €1k, which i really don't want to spend, so I'm probably going to have to have a go at restoring it myself... need to find somewhere that can supply the correct colour dye... it will never be perfect, but It can be a lot better.
It took a some googling and a few tries, but I managed to get my iphone to work with the bluetooth... now I have to decide if I want to replace the headunit... a modern unit with car play, OBD, reversiing camera etc is c.€400... if I'm honest, it wouldn't really be needed as I only use the radio, but the current one does look its age...
Service indicator only has 2 lights on it, so it will need a service soon... will get the gearbox oil changed at the same time. And I'll machine polish it once all the summer visitors have gone.
Hopefully will last us many years to come and updates here will consist of making it better, not repairing it!
Thanks Griffboy.
I’d be less intimidated by the process now, but even more distraught at the quality of Spanish cars
I’ll see if glyptone have the colour code and can ship to Spain… Brexit has made shipping stuff from the Uk a nightmare.
I’d be less intimidated by the process now, but even more distraught at the quality of Spanish cars
RelentlessForwardProgress said:
Good work on the headlights- did you UV protect them? For the seats, Gliptone will do a set that works for your leather. If they don’t have the colour on file you can send them a headrest of offcut from under a seat to match.
Not yet. I have some clear coat, but I need use of the garage at the villa my mate looks after… it’s currently got a Bentley Azure, Merc SLS and an E Type in it until the owner has them shipped back to the Uk. Once they’ve gone I’ll get it in, masked and sprayed. I’ll see if glyptone have the colour code and can ship to Spain… Brexit has made shipping stuff from the Uk a nightmare.
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