I’m referring to those between 2001 - 2005 models.
BMW has been in the market for a long time, so I expect the spare parts are easily available. Are they expensive to maintain ?
Um, try searching ‘bmw service’ or ‘bmw maintenance’ into the little box?
Comparatively speaking, yes, they are very very expensive to maintain.
Their original parts are imported from overseas and are subject to an import tax as well as additional costs due to transportation. They are also often cumbersome to work on and require plenty of man hours which costs money.
They are far less reliable than many alternatives, which can mean frequent trips for repairs. They are comprised of an ever growing number of degradable rubber and plastic components which tend to break down very quickly and fail. From experience, it seems extremely difficult to source BMWs at the three to four year old point as the number of faults which require expensive repairs are often abundant.
It is my advice for those looking at perhaps purchasing a BMW or Mercedes should look at more collectable models as they may be used less and are more often garaged which can improve the chance of finding fewer faults when sourcing.
The 3 series BMW is by far the least reliable of all the BMW models I have tried to source in the past. So bad in fact, that I have never found one in good enough condition to be worth forwarding to a client. They commonly suffer multiple gearbox faults, engine faults, and suspension faults, as well as the fore mentioned plastics and rubber degradation.
Really???
The 6 cylinder engine IMHO is one of the most reliable, strongest and sweetest engines.
I have known people to do over 300,000 MILES on those, some of which were not expertly maintained.
Chasis and engine wise those things are built like houses.
The problem is the electrics, though they arent as troublesome as some japanese cars, i have known the E46 to have a fault with the electric blower fan (the a/c or heater fan inside) randomly blowing even when the car is off.
Also the LCD display loses pixels.
The only problem with those cars in Taiwan is the idiots that own them, they crash them and repair them badly, install stupid rims and fibreglass bodykits, horrid after market suspension, fart sounding exhausts, worn out interior that reaks of smoke, silly carbon bits… i could go on.
Thats actually the only reason i never bought one, almost all of them are owned by retards and are run into the ground.
But they still run and probably will do forever.
Just try finding one that hasnt been victim to all the above!.
Unless you can work on it yourself, I would advise against it. Parts are expensive, labor is expensive. I haven’t owned one in Taiwan but my experience in the U.S. is, you always leave the dealer feeling like this: :fume: , and when you reflect on why you bought this car, you are thinking: :loco: and you swear: :no-no: never again.
muscle car easy to work on so ok if you work on them yourself. otherwise, no.
consider also what the end-effect of “included service” (LOL) for first 4 years and service intervals that often mean many 4 year old cars that are below average mileage would not even be past the factory specified interval for a first oil change at that point.
If you have drunk the Kool-Aid, cost doesn’t matter, it’s a badge of honor. It’s a BMW. If you do not yet have the addiction…
The similarity between BMW and Hemorrhoid is that only ass holes got them.
In Taiwan this is even more true than other places.
[quote=“smellybumlove”]The only problem with those cars in Taiwan is the idiots that own them, they crash them and repair them badly, install stupid rims and fibreglass bodykits, horrid after market suspension, fart sounding exhausts, worn out interior that reaks of smoke, silly carbon bits… i could go on.
Thats actually the only reason i never bought one, almost all of them are owned by retards and are run into the ground.
But they still run and probably will do forever.
Just try finding one that hasnt been victim to all the above!.[/quote]
Although to some degree I agree with you in your reference to the types of erm…“additions” that are made to these cars and how they never make them “better” to any degree, I cannot agree that the 3 series is a car which still offer a long life in terms of average motoring expectations. Most professionals in my field, including all mechanics I have ever spoken to here who work on them day to day agree that BMWs in general are, economically speaking, short lived, to be polite; and that the 3 series is pretty much the worst generation BMW have produced. Of course there are many 3 series models and yes, the larger engined models do tend to suffer fewer disastrous faults than the smaller engined models (generally), specifically the god awful 316, 318 and 320. It is in no way to say however that they are any better.
Typical faults on 3 series:
Vanos shafts
Throttle body
All brake disks
Power steering leaks
Suspension rubbers
Early engine coking
Head linings
All rubber components
Gearbox solenoids
Gearbox and engine oil seals
General electrical issues and especially relating to engine and gearbox management systems.
Head Gaskets
On post 2005s, in addition to those stated above:
ABS pumps
Flywheels on diesel models
General gearbox failures
Fuel injectors
Rear door handles
Recall on folding towbars which chafe electrical harness and cause issues.
Apparently, as with the Mini, they are usually too lazy or can’t be bothered to do recalls on the plethora on problems they suffer, which also include catastrophic disconnecting of steering couplings, steering box failure, very early suspension strut mount failures, electrical issues, sunroof guide failures and so on and so forth.
Edit: Oh, they did manage one slight recall on early models to be fair which was to prevent them from exploding when being filled with fuel.
I personally think BMW is barely the shadow of what it once stood for in terms of vehicle quality. I personally think that anyone who owns one has either too much money, or low expectations. Or both!
Conventional wisdom is don’t own a BMW out of warranty.
[quote=“Stian”]The similarity between BMW and Hemorrhoids is that only ass holes got them.
In Taiwan this is even more true than other places.[/quote]
QFT!
My old E39 M5 was 6 years old when i bought it, though it had warranty, in 20,000miles of inner city use (london!) the only thing that went wrong was the fan fault which i mentioned and a blown bulb.
I only replaced the oil and filter in that 20,000miles of ownership, i didnt even warm up the car properly before driving 
I do agree that the 4 cylinder models are shite, my mum has one, its an auto and she drives it like a lunatic and again doesnt warm it up.
But i tell you what, shes put over 80,000 miles on that car and has owned it since 2002… not a single fault.
Most bmw owners that were friends of mine never had any issues either, but then all of their cars were like 2-3 years old.
Im talking about the E46 series, not the newer or older models.
But then this is Taiwan, if something is to go wrong with a car, it will in Taiwan due to the driving conditions and the high humidity.
Its no secret that prestigous german cars dont like humid countrys.
As much as I believe you to be honest about your experience, I can never the less fail entirely to rate the E46 as a quality product, and I have never once inspected one which didn’t yield a long list of issues.
I do believe however that many people believe their vehicle to have few if no issues at all, until they have actually had one inspected by a professional. I am not claiming that you know nothing about your own vehicle however; this is simply an observation.
As an unrelated single example, I just purchased a 1994 Nissan AD Sentra from a salesman who completely believed the vehicle was in good working order. I trust him to be honest, but unskilled in motor mechanics, yet upon inspecting it, before even purchasing it, I was quite aware that his standards were far different to my own. I have since replaced the entire steering system, the automatic gearbox and the air-conditioning pump clutch as well as various window seals and trim and four new tyres. To most people who would have driven the car, they may not have been aware of any underlying issues. Its one thing to drive a vehicle and trust a semi-paraprofessional’s opinion, but its an entirely different thing to actually know about motor vehicles.
This is not necessarily directed at you smellybumlove, but at the majority of folks who believe there to be nothing wrong with their vehicle before allowing a professional to inspect it properly.
Even the service centre I work with and who are quite proficient at their work spend only a small fraction of the time checking the vehicles they service when compared to the attention I give a vehicle. It is more common than not that I can find faults with a vehicle, even after they have paid attention to servicing it in a normally acceptable manner. I’m not trying to blow my own trumpet, even though it may sound that way, but that’s often the way it is.
On average I find over 99% of all the vehicles I ever inspect, regardless of whether I source them or others to have faults.
Vehicles most likely to fail to be recommended or purchased based on inspection reports however by brand are Peugeot, BMW (including Mini) then Mercedes. I have literally never found a single Peugeot over four years old which I have sourced to be in fine working order and recommendable to a customer and I have only ever sourced one type of BMW which is considered possible to even bother sourcing and that has been the last Z4. And this is only because they are more collectable, are not practical to drive on many local roads, and are often used as a second vehicle only. Some are basically seldom driven, but serviced and garaged, not to say that the majority of them are still destroyed through inappropriate usage and suffer from poor modifications. I have never found one to be without issues, but at least their issues may be considered to be economically viable to be repaired. This is also taking into account the high cost of purchasing these vehicles in the first place, so by comparison to purchase cost, the issues can sometimes be comparatively inexpensive. Never the less issues on the best of Z4s tend to be in the tens of thousands to resolve. The 3 series is almost always considered to be too expensive to repair to be bothered with as its inerrant value is not high enough to begin with.
So to re-emphasise, BMWs are generally for people with a lot of money to spend and who generally have low expectations, but a desire for a “luxury” brand (even though BMW now produce lots of non-luxury cars to allow even more people to blow their money on one). The most irate BMW customers are always the ones who believed they were purchasing a reliable piece of German engineering however. Unfortunately these people generally suffer the hype of a product which is still benefiting from its long, former history as a car which did offer such characteristics, once upon a time. It also helps that the BMW marketing division is the one still considered to be the most successful element of the company and the one which has kept that impression alive, even until now.
I hope that was mine!
As much as I love driving the Mini, repair bills are not for the faint hearted. Fuel pumps, cold start issues, coked up engines are well reported by owners. In the UK and US these are covered by the warranty…here, no such luck. Z4 seems reliable but as Sulavaca says any trip to the dealers in Taiwan (or other countries), is going to end up hurting your wallet. I have seen some unbelievably thrashed and trashed Z4’s but on the whole seem better cared for than 3 series. I hear your pain Smellybumlove as trying to find a decent M3 here seems impossible. I don’t fancy the repair bills for them either!
BMW…unreliable? More so than Lexus but who wants a Lexus? Expensive to repair? Yup. It’s a German import in Taiwan. What do you expect? Regrets? None.
No regrets is the best anyone can hope for when making their vehicle purchase, and the feeling of enjoyment and satisfaction, even better! I’m happy you feel that way.
Oh, and yes, your BMW Z4 was a good example!
BMW are not just unreliable compared to Lexus, they are unreliable compared to a host of brands. Of course Luxury cars, fitted with a host of accessories are generally going to risk failure of at least one or two more of their additional components than other more basic cars, but even basic BMs don’t come up to par with rivals. Edit: Built to a limited budget, often at the cost of expensive Euro labour. They soon become economically non-viable investments on the used scene and can sit around on forecourts for an eternity before being sold. The reason German cars seem to ask a high price on the used scene is that they are so seldom sold compared to competitor models. Its not just German cars however. Anything with at least a question mark looming over its head has the same problem. My favourite example was the Infinity QX4. A couple of years ago when everyone was expecting the cost of fuel to soon equal the cost of diamonds per kilo the QX4 at best was purchased by the used car sellers at 60,000NT. Of course it was advertised for a couple of hundred thousand and more. Some who knew of this ridiculously sounding markup would ask why, including myself. The common answer was however that these cars would normally stand on a forecourt for at least a year on average and couldn’t be sold easily, even at knock down prices. They just ended up being a vehicle which only people who didn’t care about tax and fuel costs would buy. “So be it” the sellers agreed and fixed their prices at way, way, way above purchase price.
A similar situation is there for German cars. They aren’t generally as popular in the used car market. Sellers will often advertise them for a long time and figure that the only way to reap the rewards is to hike the prices to make up for spent time. Of course, they could always try to cut their losses and turn them over quickly and at a lower price, but then that kills the trust in the brand and then depreciation out paces the ability to shift them quickly enough, resulting in heavier losses and an even stronger market psychology against German brands. It is therefore in the dealer’s favour that they support used car prices, even at the expense of being stuck with them.
I recently warned a professional seller of this when they purchased a three year old Audi A8 in at over a million NT. They didn’t quite believe me when I said it would, with little doubt, still be there a year later, and sure enough six months have already passed. I hope they don’t have to learn the hard way. They are already looking quite concerned however. Shame. Nice people!
Oh im sensitive to the condition of my vehicles, i can feel if the tyres are different pressures each side, if the car is reducing timing… one of my skills is telling if a car isnt right, hence why it takes me so long to buy one!.
But mine was a cherry example, i known 2 other M5 owners with vano issues and M-style in essex (guys who modded my exhaust and sold me wheels) always said i had one of the best examples they had ever seen!.
So yeah im a bit biased i guess.
E46 and E39’s are the one of the last cars that arent hidous, have good safety standards and actually make you feel as if you are driving… not the computer!.
But i do agree that taiwanese ones are f**ked, as are all german cars 
Theres probably a nice M3 out there somewhere if you have the patience to look!.
unless you are going to race it. 
the actual rationale for buying BMWs and Porsches to race back in the states is quite easy - car club specific event access. you get access to BMWCCA events, and also some PCA events which gives you that many more race weekends a year. 
these also coincidentally tend to be good networking events.
unfortunately this doesn’t really exist in taiwan.
unless you are going to race it. [/quote]
Yes, well, since racing the car and having a warranty are usually mutually exclusive options, I didn’t think it worth mentioning.
unless you are going to race it. [/quote]
Yes, well, since racing the car and having a warranty are usually mutually exclusive options, I didn’t think it worth mentioning.[/quote]
remember the whole street-class time-trail / autocross EVO thing where people were getting them serviced under warranty then finally mitsu decided to look into entry sheets and deny service to people? after that we had a guy at the local time times who would register as “ace ventura”.
Can the same be said of Volkswagon Golf ?