So looking at car for the missus.
Thinking around 5k.
AUTO is a must.
She wants some decent looks and it must have some go. Prefers coupe to saloon and no tourers (just don't understand why she can't see the beauty of a tourer...anyhow..). No cabrio either. No roadsters
Looking at cars up to 6k with 70k miles or less on autotrader mainly brings up petrols, mostly 4cyl.
It seems the 4cyl in these cars are very problematic with expensive issues. Seem to have ok performance and good
MPG (i.e. 150bhp and 45mpg combined).
That said the 6cyls have issues too like high pressure fuel pumps.
Injectors, coils and electric water pumps are common across the range.
The 4cyl diesels suffers catastrophic timing chain failures.
It's pretty grim when I put it like this and the Honest John site can make it seem worse that it is http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/carbycar/bmw/3-series-e90-2005/?section=good but to be fair the HJ site has been helpful on all the used cars I've bought and helped me find issues I wouldn't know to look for so in my experience it's pretty good indicator.
So what do we say - is it really that risky a car yo buy? It seems to have a lot more expensive faults than say a e46 or even a Z3 but it seems the way of the modern car - lots more to go wrong if you get a bad one.
Would a similar size car from Audi or Merx be better? Don't know them well (except that Audi mutitronic is very unreliable and Merc isnt what it used to be on the mainstream models).
Thinking around 5k.
AUTO is a must.
She wants some decent looks and it must have some go. Prefers coupe to saloon and no tourers (just don't understand why she can't see the beauty of a tourer...anyhow..). No cabrio either. No roadsters
Looking at cars up to 6k with 70k miles or less on autotrader mainly brings up petrols, mostly 4cyl.
It seems the 4cyl in these cars are very problematic with expensive issues. Seem to have ok performance and good
MPG (i.e. 150bhp and 45mpg combined).
That said the 6cyls have issues too like high pressure fuel pumps.
Injectors, coils and electric water pumps are common across the range.
The 4cyl diesels suffers catastrophic timing chain failures.
It's pretty grim when I put it like this and the Honest John site can make it seem worse that it is http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/carbycar/bmw/3-series-e90-2005/?section=good but to be fair the HJ site has been helpful on all the used cars I've bought and helped me find issues I wouldn't know to look for so in my experience it's pretty good indicator.
So what do we say - is it really that risky a car yo buy? It seems to have a lot more expensive faults than say a e46 or even a Z3 but it seems the way of the modern car - lots more to go wrong if you get a bad one.
Would a similar size car from Audi or Merx be better? Don't know them well (except that Audi mutitronic is very unreliable and Merc isnt what it used to be on the mainstream models).
