I, 23M, am thinking of buying a BMW 525i (post 2007). Growing up I thought these looked amazing and now I’m genuinely considering getting one. How bad an idea is this and have I completely lost it?
I can vouch for the E60 525i. Solid car, I’ve never had any really bad problems with mine.
In the ~7 years I’ve owned mine (bought at 8 years old with 150k miles on the clock), I’ve had to:
- replace the front springs
- replace the front shocks
- replace an ignition coil
- have a wiring repair job done on the reversing switch
… and other than that, it’s been fuel, filters, and tyres. It’s been solidly reliable, decently fun to drive, and very practical.
If you can do a lot of the service yourself you’ll save a lot of dough. We have two, E60 and E61. They look good and are fun to drive. Almost 200k miles on one and 260k on the other. No rust on either.
525i
You’ll be alright. Still pricey with maintenance but generally speaking cheaper to run and more reliable than the 535i.
09-10 manual if you can go for it get a manual, radio is going to cut out eventually so plan on that, rwd unless you need awd. Not problematic but expensive when it’s just additional hardware, water pumps are way way more work.
Depends who are you buying it from, if it was not maintained properly and abused then you are in a lot of trouble, consider hiring someone who’ll be whole to diagnose the car on the spot
2.5L straight six 👌🏻. I had a 525i and it was a great car. Depending on what kind of driving you do. If it’s mostly motorway I’d get an auto personally. Have a look on YouTube there are loads of people having these as project cars so you can get the idea of maintenance cost, running costs etc… good luck! 👍🏻