E34 wins coveted award!

i had a loan of a brand new fiesta "style" the other day - what a horrible little car,  my mk2 1.1 ghia had a softer steering wheel and a better overall ambience

now where did i put my rose tinted glasses? 

spokey wrote: Peter Fenwick wrote: on a tight twisting B road it would keep up with my 530 and your 540 no problem. Are you quite sure about that? I took a Fiesta ST to a humility lesson in my 25-year-old 323i Baur the other day. And you can ask anybody who's seen the Baur ... the handling is "interesting". Also, when I had a Focus as a hire car, although it wasn't bad, I found the torque steer horrendous and very distracting when really pressing on.

Absolutely sure.

The handling is superb and the turn is is the best on any car I have ever driven. On a twisting road where the speed comes down to how much you can carry through the bends rather than outright BHP it would keep up with most things.

WRT your 323 showing up a Fiesta ST, I suspect that has more to do with driver abillity that anything else  

Oh and Torque steer?! a 1.8 focus doesn't have enough power to start with. I have certainly never experienced any.

As for driving crap cars, I had a Matiz 1.0 Se as a hire car on holiday recently. We were short of cash so had to go for the cheapest they had. When the aircon was running 5th gear was utterly pointless as you would have to change down as soon as you got to the slightest of inclines. A horrible, horrible car. It's only good feature was how easy it was to park

spokey wrote: Peter Fenwick wrote: The handling is superb and the turn is is the best on any car I have ever driven. On a twisting road where the speed comes down to how much you can carry through the bends rather than outright BHP it would keep up with most things. If you say so. I must have been driving something else.

Maybe it was the new model, my wifes is an X reg. It's also the zetec so has stiffer suspension and it has decent tyres on which make a difference. The LX isn't half as good IMO. The engine is crap though.

Peter Fenwick wrote: [QUOTE=RedOctober]   Oh and one final point, no one on a tight budget should buy a 540. If money is tight the last thing anyone needs is a car that is going to get 20mpg, requires £100+ tyres and requires proper servicing to keep it running sweet. This is exactly why there are so many knackered 540s out there because people buy them thinking they will be cheap and end up not being able to pay for the proper maintenance/repairs.

I have to disagree sligtly. When I bought my 540, I was not on a tight budget, but I am now. However, I've had the car for 2 years and it has cost me rocker cover gaskets (about £20 for the pair) and service items which I fitted myself. I work in a garage and usually have use of ramps as well as the technicians help when I need it. My car also does better mpg than you stated. I went from reading to Eastbourne on a busy Friday night via a jam packed M25 where I sat for 35 minutes in stop-start traffic and my obc still showed I got 27mpg with all that and country lanes in mind.

The running cost of a V8 can be drastically reduced if you are a fairly competent amature mechanic and you have the odd person who doesn't mind sharing their knowlege with you. Mine costs me £30-£40 a week in fuel, including my wife using it for business (lots of country lanes) and It's sailed through all 3 MOT's as I maintain it regularly and keep it running smooth all the time. As the saying goes, a stitch in time, saves nine!

Mike

P.S. oh yeah, I can get a set of four tyres for my car, fitted and balanced for £200!!  it's not what you know........................

Ok, i'm sure there are ways to reduce the cost of ownership but that's not the point. Compared to a 1.6 family hatch a 540 is going to be very expensive to run. If you can service a 540 for beer money yourself you can service a 1.6 astra for peanuts. Tyres are the same, so you can get 4 tyres for £200, I used to get 4 tyres for a Honda Civic for £140. Also what make of tyres are you talking about? and just because you know someone doesn't mean everyone does. If you knew a BMW mechanic who would service your car for free it still doesn't make a 540 a cheap car to run, it just makes you lucky!

I still maintain that if you are on a tight budget and only have £3k to spend on a car then you would be mad to buy a 540. 

My 530 only manages 25mpg on my daily commute which is about 10 miles of single carridge way A roads with roundabouts every mile or so. Traffic is normally heavy but nearly always moving freely. As I don't know the reading to eastbourne route i can't really comment. You did mention country roads though which in my experience are normally quite an economical. The best MPG my 328 ever achived was on a trip to the lake district. Also check your OBC mpg by measuruing mpg the old fashioned way. In my experience they aren't always very accurate.

I've heard all the arguments about how cheap it is to run a big BMW, mainly because I've made them all before myself. At the end of the day though a Big engined BMW will not get great mpg, and will cost more the run that a typical 5 door family hatch. So if money is tight you would be better of getting the family hatch.

If money is tight then most people wouldn't even consider a BMW, neither would they be on this forum, which is generally aimed at enthusiast owners or people who need advice on their BMW's

For many people on these forums BMW ownership is about more than just running costs. If I really wanted to slash my motoring budget I'd buy a high-mileage 1989 VW Golf 1.3CL for £300 and insure it 3rd party only.

If people were on a tight budget I'd imagine the last place they'd be is on an enthusiast BMW forum looking for a big old 5 or 7 series.

As for running costs in general, once you've paid for the basics, you do actually have some choice as to how expensive your ownership costs will be.

I made damn sure I avoided metric wheels on my 540i for starters, and made sure the vehicle had had a replacement Alusil engine-they were my personal minimum requirements.

Why did I specify this? Because, like many on here, I'm a BMW enthusiast, neither a pauper nor filthy rich-just seeking value for money.

If I was on a tight budget, I wouldn't even be on a BMW forum, or any other prestige car forum for that matter-I'd be scanning the local rag for £100 Ford escorts.

Also, I doubt very much that someone in their right mind would consider a BMW 540i if they were on a tight budget-and they certainly wouldn't need either you or I to tell them that.

On the subject of sudden expensive repair bills-why should a big powerful car be more prone to breakdown than a small car, or any less reliable?

In this country, the speed at which you can drive your vehicle is limited by the speed of the car in front of you, prevailing traffic conditions, and speed cameras etc.

So it's highly unlikely that a powerful car will have spent much time at the very outside edge of it's performance envelope if owned by a reasonable person, so it will have spent a greater proportion of it's running time greatly understressed, unlike a smaller car.

Yes, there'll always be the lunatic owners who'll rag their cars without consideration for their own safety, the safety of other road users, and the vehicle itself, but with a bit of care when buying the car you can spot the 'horrors' and 'basket cases' by research and common sense.

You are correct that a car which does 35-40mpg will require less fuel than one which does 25mpg, in the same vein that a car which does 55-60mpg will cost even less to run than the 35-40mpg car.

So where do you draw the line? It all depends on your personal circumstances.

Concerning the accuracy of OBC mpg readings, in my experience these can vary notably, and my BM's have been up to 10% inaccurate either way.

For example, a while back I went on a long trip to Scotland in my 540i. I brimmed the 17.6 gallon tank and did 485 miles before the red low fuel light came on, with just under 2 gallons remaining. I managed to squeeze in 16 gallons of fuel to brim the tank again, giving just over 30mpg.

The trip computer was indicating 33mpg at this point, which I knew was wrong. After some web digging, I found a way to unlock the OBC and manually put in a 'correction factor' so the OBC now gives the same mpg readings as the 'brim' method.

The point I am making about the 540i is that it's not as ludicrously expensive to run as may be imagined. I've run cheap cars-I've had £400 E28 525e's and an E30 318i with the M40 engine, so I can make an easy comparison with the respective running costs, and the 540i stacks up very well in my experience.

Which is why I rate it so highly.

If you're buying a 540i, you're most probably an enthusiast anyway, so you're more than likely aware of the Nikasil issue which, incidentally, also affected E36 328i's, E39 528i's & 728i's made between 1995-1998.

I doubt very much that people on a budget who normally buy cheap-to-run cars are suddenly going to romp home with a dodgy BMW 540i.

But in the same vein if you get a decent one you don't have that much to fear, and they're not bank-breakingly expensive to run. No, they're not 'bargain basement' motors, but if you already run a 320 or a 325i for example, like I did, the upgrade to a 540i pretty much keeps the status quo financially speaking.

As for my car having the potential to become very expensive to run, that will be amply compensated for by the fact it wasn't that expensive to buy in the first place, and hasn't yet broken in a big way, not that there's any reason why it should suddenly do so.

At the end of the day, why should I worry about something that may or may not happen in the future? If we all lived our lives worrying about the 'potential' consequences, real or imagined, of the decisions we make in life, then we'd never progress, never do anything, and be stuck in limbo.

My comments on this topic are based entirely on my own ownership experiences of owning a decent example of a 540i. If somebody decides to buy a basket case and doesn't bother researching them beforehand then that's their problem, not mine.

The basic car buying rules apply to all cars, be it economical small car or big-engined large car.

Use your common sense when buying and you most likely won't come unstuck.

Alex

You're welcome, Fingerman-glad it's of some use 

I've had 3 E34's and really rate them-they're very tough if a little heavy, but then that weight gives them their strength.

Previously I've owned 3 E28's and 3 E30's, and a mean looking black 635CSi with black leather interior and knackered air-con, which was hilarious to get into after being parked all day in the sun at work

E34's still look modern and are great used buys, and it was gratifying to find a non-BMW biased magazine also thought so too-hence this post.

To the E34 then, in whatever bodyshape, engine size or trim level

Well said, 540i V8-you sum up the passion in the buying decision admirably, and the joy of subsequent ownership-that's what it's all about.

Nice one guys-now I've run out of words

Alex

Points taken, although I strongly suspect that someone on a tight budget would themselves realise that a 540i was not the best car to have, without us needing to tell them

I will confess that I have an unfair advantage over many people as I work in the electronics repair industry down to component level, and can handle most of the electronics on the older BM's, including ECU's.

I once had an ECU die on my very first BMW-an E30 325i. The AA towed me home and I removed the ECU and opened it up. I found a couple of fractured solder joints on the output transistors that drive the fuel injectors, so 15 minutes with a soldering iron and all was well again with no cost

A great many BMW faults can be attributed to electrical systems going intermittent or failing. I diagnosed a failed Lambda sensor on my 525i Touring using an oscilloscope and pin-outs of the ECU, and fitted an aftermarket one for £20 as I only do a lowish mileage in it.

Yes, you do need to have a bit of nous about you to run a big BM on a low budget, but with care it's not impossible-I suspect this is why they appeal to enthusiasts, who are quite happy to get their hands dirty, so to speak.

I bought mine on what you'd call a 'comfortable' budget-I'd set a limit of £5k tops, an chose an older, more 'interesting' car rather than a mainstream younger one.

There was an element of risk in the decision, but I weighed everything up based on my previous BMW experience and making the following assumptions:-

1)   The M60 V8 engine's only real achillies heel is the Nikasil issue-other than that they are generally a trouble-free unit so unlikely to cause any other big bills if you get a good one.

2)   Final drive units seem to be mostly bomb proof on BM's, so this was unlikely to fail either.

3)   Steering boxes do wear, but can have a reasonable amount of the free play adjusted out, and re-conditioned boxes aren't prohibitively expensive as they were fitted to all models from 518i to M5, so wouldn't be that hard to source at a reasonable price.

4)   Catalytic converters were an unknown quantity, but if you follow the basic simple rules to avoid contaminating the cats with unburnt fuel, oil etc, then they only other way they fail is mechanically if they suffer a sharp impact such as driving over rutted surfaces, so I drive very carefully , if at all, on uneven ground. I keep the cats clean as my 40 mile round trip to work is mostly motorway/A-road to keep the speed up and the cats above 'light-off' temperature.

5)   Finally the big one-the autobox. This is the biggest unknown quantity on a 540i, and is a gamble, especially as DIY fluid changes are not possible on it's 'sealed for life' box-a backward step in my humble opinion.

However, as I'd planned to keep the car for many years, and you're unlikely to ever have to replace an autobox more than once in it's lifetime, then I could cope with one big autobox failure without making the whole exercise unfeasible financially.

A gamble yes, but a lucky one so far 

I often ponder over what I'll replace it with when it does eventually bite the dust, and it'll almost certainly be with an E39 5-series.

I quite fancy an E39 540i Touring, although I'm also very tempted by the six-cylinder 530i E39, as this engine seems to be one of BMW's gems in all the road tests I've ever read-powerful for a 3 litre and capable of giving excellent economy, and also having the rack-and-pinion steering instead of the V8's steering box.

I have a colleague at work who is the complete opposite of me when it comes to cars-he's always bought Fords because, in his words, they're 'cheap to fix'

This was just as well as his 2 litre Mondeo lunched it's cat (£200), and then shortly after his wife's1.6 Focus needed a new clutch (£300).

In contrast my 2 E34's both sailed through their MOT's after yet another breakdown-free year of motoring. The 540i has now passed 3 consecutive MOT's since I've owned it, and it's been quite simply the best BM I've ever owned.

I'll put up with 1 big failure (probably autobox) if that ever happens, but any more than that and I'll just cut my losses and get rid before it turns into a money pit, as by then it'll be worth so little on the used market that it'd be pointless fixing it-although I will shed real tears when that day does eventually arrive

Surely this must now be the last word on this topic

Cheers everyone for reading and contributing to a very lively debate

Alex

Derek M5 wrote: RedOctober wrote: Surely this must now be the last word on this topic? So we're all agreed, for the E34 the only one to have is the M5......

No, 518 touring I think you'll find

Bloody hell RedOctober, are you going for the longest post in history record?

Have you thought about going into business repairing ECUs. I reckon there must be loads of money to be made, especially with cars where second hand ones aren't an option.