Picked up a new toy...

[AZSP33D]

Cheap to buy but expensive to own...

 

[flbchbm]

VERY expensive...

 

[the duke]

 

[green_henry]

BMW's are money pits, but you already acknowledged that. Are you going to flip it? Enjoy it until it needs work!

 

[scooter123]

I found a 750 IL for the asking price of only 3500 bucks and though that could be a bargain. So I did some checking on the Net. Apparently the average cost of ownership for a used BMW was 340.00 per month. Back when I was a 16 year old the 2002Tii was quite sporty and notable for being easy to maintain. Needless to say things have change a LOT. I would not touch a new or used BMW with a 10 foot pole. IMO any car maker with so little regard for the longevity of their products needs to close up shop. BTW, I have the same regard for Mercedes. Which is a really big disappointment. Because I had an uncle who was a huge Mercedes fan and had a 190SL with two Concours badges. BTW was a time when those badges were a really big deal, my uncle used to strip that 190SL down to the bare body and hand clean and touch up every single part to insure the car looked factory fresh for the competition.

 

[Dpro]

I love BMW's I do not love the money pit aspect of them. I speak from being a BMW owner. Awesome cars to drive though.
I prefer to spend my money elsewhere though. Though I get it. If you love em and don't care spend.

 

[DoomsdayMelody]

I found a 750 IL for the asking price of only 3500 bucks and though that could be a bargain. So I did some checking on the Net. Apparently the average cost of ownership for a used BMW was 340.00 per month. Back when I was a 16 year old the 2002Tii was quite sporty and notable for being easy to maintain. Needless to say things have change a LOT. I would not touch a new or used BMW with a 10 foot pole. IMO any car maker with so little regard for the longevity of their products needs to close up shop. BTW, I have the same regard for Mercedes. Which is a really big disappointment. Because I had an uncle who was a huge Mercedes fan and had a 190SL with two Concours badges. BTW was a time when those badges were a really big deal, my uncle used to strip that 190SL down to the bare body and hand clean and touch up every single part to insure the car looked factory fresh for the competition.

I mean a 7 series is an expensive car, whether or not you buy it for that price maintenance doesn’t get cheaper. I’m actually looking at some E90 3 series cars right now, back when they still had hydraulic steering and naturally aspirated straight sixes as base engines and I’m kind of leaning towards that for my next car in 1-2 years. Never understood people who talk about other manufacturers having poor longevity, Ford has the same reputation in other circles, and Toyota is buying and selling a BMW powertrain in the Supra. I sincerely doubt Toyota would gamble their reputation on a halo car if they weren’t decently reliable.

Of course a Fiesta ST is gonna be cheaper to own, everything about it is built on a much smaller budget. While there are horror stories out there about pretty much every FoMoCo product, I’d think people who would buy their cars would at least understand that reliability reputations don’t hold much water. One of my buddies has a 99 328, just ticked over 300k miles and all he’s done is fluids and 2 clutches so far. I’d have no reservations about buying a used beemer, just be prepared to maintain a car that costs 3-5x as much as a Fiesta.


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[Ford ST]

I understand it because I was lucky enough to get to spend two years seeing a wide variety of vehicles.
BMWs and Mercedes definitely have reliability problems and the cost to fix them can be insane.
I have seen Mercedes engines jump the timing chain not high mileage now you got to take the motor apart not cheap on that car. I've seen BMWs with less than a hundred thousand miles leaking every type of fluid on the car you can think of very expensive to fix.

That's my opinion and no one's going to change it. I've worked on the BMW next to the Mercedes next to the Toyota next to Honda I saw the differences. I don't care what the vehicle is I will call out the problems that it has.

Savagegeese my favorite car reviewer the guy owned a M3 he will tell you BMWs are money pits. Is BMW the worst brand when it comes to reliability no.

Maintenance equals fluids and filters. maintenance doesn't equal parts breaking. Maintenance doesn't equal electrical failures. Maintenance doesn't equal the luxury features you paid for not working.


With all that said I hope the car is enjoyed and I'm sure it's going to be extremely fun. I also hope it's super reliable.



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[maestromaestro]

Can only talk about a marquee being unreliable in general - there are always outliers. My (stupidly) long gone E39 M5 was expensive to own. The E36 M3 wasn’t. Nobody buys bimmers (that’s the car; beemer is the motorcycle) for the low cost of ownership.

To that end, I could never understand why people want to buy 10 yo BMWs or MBs; as the earlier posts said, they may be cheap to buy, but the replacement parts are still priced as for a new one. Try a $30k Bentley Continental, if you REALLY want to feel the pain.

But, a 740 IL is a good looking car still. Timeless. Before the Bangle butt.

 

[Dpro]

Can only talk about a marquee being unreliable in general - there are always outliers. My (stupidly) long gone E39 M5 was expensive to own. The E36 M3 wasn’t. Nobody buys bimmers (that’s the car; beemer is the motorcycle) for the low cost of ownership.

To that end, I could never understand why people want to buy 10 yo BMWs or MBs; as the earlier posts said, they may be cheap to buy, but the replacement parts are still priced as for a new one. Try a $30k Bentley Continental, if you REALLY want to feel the pain.

But, a 740 IL is a good looking car still. Timeless. Before the Bangle butt.

You have probably been out of the E36 M3 game for a minute things have changed drastically. They are shooting back up value now. Good examples are upwards of 15-20k these days. Parts are now getting harder to get from BMW. The prices on the parts that were once relatively reasonably priced because a lot were stock E36 parts are now stupidly pricey. If you can even get some stuff. I have owned E36 M3’s for close to 8 years now and the days of cheap are long over. Now a standard E36 ya those can be had for a lot less but the parts lol.

 

[AZSP33D]

Little bit like gambling perhaps. Damn sexy though, and inside too, if you ever look down those CNC intake ports at the long beautiful valves with narrow stems. Good for 8500RPMs, also have the M5 in a manual transmission for the same year, and have it supercharged. Well built engine, but there’s a steep learning curve with maintenance. Notorious rod bearings, same as in the V8 version of the engine, need proactive replacement... but some have replaced at 130K+ miles and they looked fine whereas some have had failures at 40k. Seen many past 180K miles otherwise. There are solenoids for adjusting the four camshafts which are operated by a 1400psi oil pump, that can be finicky (likes clean oil and doesn’t like contamination) Spark plugs have ionic sensors to adjust timing and need replacement at 30K miles. Individual throttle bodies for each of the 10 cylinders, it’s a special car but has a risky appetite for expensive maintenance like an exotic well beyond such as the Bentley mentioned. They made a lot of them (S85 M5-M6) as they sold very well with dealers taking $30K premiums in some places.

 

[theblue]

very nice! good luck with those rod bearings.

 

[HardBoiledEgg]

WOULD NEVER TOUCH A GERMAN CAR. NOT EVEN NEW CAUSE I CAN'T AFFORD THEM NEW LOL

 

[Capri to ST]

I had an E90 M3, and it was a really nice car, but was very expensive to keep going. It would nickel-and-dime you with random electrical sensors going out, except the nickels and dimes were $500 and $1,000. Replacing the battery cost about $600 because besides the part itself being expensive, it had to be programmed to the car, I think to reset some kind of adjustable charging mechanism. The manual transmission was replaced, that was under warranty, but would have been seven or eight thousand dollars otherwise.
The car had a magnificent V-8 engine, 8400 RPM and 414 horsepower, but that engine it was also potentially its most expensive Achilles heel. It had the rod bearing issue mentioned before, and if they weren't proactively replaced I believe could cause an engine failure. An engine for the car was over $30,000 if I remember correctly. The car also got 11 to 14 miles per gallon and routine driving.
The problem for me in having a car that goes 0 to 100 in about 10 seconds is that you want to go zero to a hundred in about 10 seconds. I decided some point I didn't want to risk that ticket anymore, so then I couldn't really use the engine except in short unsatisfying bursts.
I ended up replacing the car with this car, which I like better in every way except the engine. The great thing about this car is that you can use its primary asset, the nimble quick handling, all the time without going to jail.