Hi all,

Bit of a strange one I know. I'm looking for a new car budget around £16000, I've had a E46 M3 in the past and loved it till someone drove in to the front of other!!
Love the V10 engine in both the M5 and M6 not to worried about the running/servicing costs only do around 500-600 miles a month. I've read up a lot on the horror story's, but that doesn't put me off to much.
The 335i coupe is very different to both of the above but for some reason I keep looking at those as well plus they aren't to expensive to get to 400bhp, I know that's over 100bhp less than both cars.

What are people's thoughts?

 

Thought about a C63 ?

You could get a early one around your budget...

 

The C63 is a little out of budget can't find one for less than £20k

 

The costs on the m5 even at 5-600 miles a month will be huge if anything goes wrong. I'd be looking for one with a warranty running.
Find the 335 even when played with just isn't an m car and you can tell.
Ended up with an e92 m3 in the end when I was looking at this sort of stuff a while back

 

I was wanting an e60 M5 a while back but with the maintenance, fuel and need for the wife to drive it occasionally ended up buying this




550i Msport. 4.8 V8, no clunky semi-auto, one owner 38k miles.
It's no M5 but plenty fast enough for the real world.
For sale soon

 

Lovely car but it's not quite an M car if that makes sense.

 

Absolutely. I had an E39 M5 and although the performance of this is very similar it's not the same.
One thing that concerned me with a lot of the E60 M5's was the number of owners they seem to have. Suppose it comes with buying a £60k+ car for £16k?

 

I feel it's just a fact of life with a lot of cars these days, people just don't keep cars 5+ years anymore.

 

I think alot of it is people buying M5's without having a true idea of running costs.

I only had my m3 for 6 months cos i found it too boring comparing it to the b road blast of a scoob. Was nothing wrong with it when i sold it on and had a great history, rear subframe already fixed etc etc

I think i'd only be worried if a car had averaged 2 owners a year over its life, so 10 year old car with 20 owners etc

 

Iv got a friend who had an M5 for a few years, sold it last year as he got fed up with huge running costs. He did the gearbox twice & then electrical issues made him throw in the towel as well as low teens mpg. Now he's bought an E92 M3 instead.

I'd actually consider something like Monkeys 550iM as it doesn't suffer the same gearbox and maintenance issues & in the real world (not on track) you're not going to notice a huge difference between the two. Also I have yet to see a 550iM on the road apart from the one above.

 

buying your type r made much more financial sense, you only had to rebuild the engine

 

had it not gone would have gone up 2-3k since i bought it

good job i bought it to keep or i would have been right out of pocket though hahaha

 

Last time I looked there were only 29 550's registered in the UK.

 

I have an e60 m5 and while it's a great car it's utterly pointless, 200 miles per tank and 12 mpg are plain stupid. Mine has an evolve induction kit and headers with a remap because 507 bhp was not enough...... The current cheap petrol makes it more fun to use but if it was my only car I am not sure it would make sense. I have changed a clutch and tyres and I need new front disks but it has been completely reliable. It's a stupid road car but I love it and with mods , clutch and 4 new tyres I have spent 4500 in two years and new disks will probably cost at least 1500. The plus is that they are holding value well at the moment. The only reason I can think to get rid is wanting an sl65....

 

What about a V8 M3 saloon?

Relatively rare car, sound great with the right exhaust.

 

My uncle has a 550 M sport 2007. Great car but it's so thirsty!

 

I ended up with a 2009 335i coupe.
Just had it mapped after fitting a pair of down pipes and a fmic managed 410.6 bhp. So not to bad at all really.

 

Not bad I'm still looking for a 335d touring or 535d touring, hard to find with about 60k on clock all have a million miles on them

 

I wouldn't worry about mileage in fairness, the routings generally have higher mileage anyway as that's exactly what they're for - long journeys. Sooner a good sample with motorway miles than a low mileage one with the DPF and EGR clogged up (my 330d that's up for sale had issues with both).

The auto box on the 335d is a beaut apparently.

 

I believe the 335d autobox is the same unit as the autobox in my old 335i... which was a complete pig, slow (boost dropping) changes, lurches between changes, got stuck in gears, got confused about what gear to be in, etc. Was absolutely no fun at all, could have been in a 320d automatic driving in D, returning double the mpg for all the enjoyment I got from that car.

Put me right off having an automatic gearbox ever again.

My old man has a 635d with (I was led to believe) the same gearbox.. but it had a 'Sport' button which when pressed and the leaver switched to manual mode, will sharpen up the gearchanges no end, not quite DCT/DSG fast, but a MILLION miles better than the 335i gearbox which didn't have a 'Sport' button to press and switching to manual mode did nothing else but hold onto gears longer rather than speed up gear change speed.

I'd be looking for an E61 535d LCI which should have the same set up as my dads 2010 635d has.


Cheers,
Grant