"RallyWrench" (rndlitebmw)
02/12/2016 at 21:03 • Filed to: E38
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"RallyWrench" (rndlitebmw)
02/12/2016 at 21:03 • Filed to: E38 | 8
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This is a 1998 740iL, owned by a client. We’ve seen the car since 2003 and 73,329 miles. It now has 147,000 miles on it, and now needs a water pump. They have taken fastidious care of it, and it remains one of the nicest we see.
It has been in the shop 29 times in total in slightly over 12 years, and their overall expenditure is $12,373.02. Sounds like a lot, right? As a lump sum, it is. But consider: the average bill has been $426.65, and the average annual expenditure has been $1,031.00. This includes everything from routine services to large jobs, such as replacing the torque converter replacing the timing chain guides.
When looked at this way, $1,000 a year to daily drive a 7-series BMW sounds pretty reasonable. This is why I will defend these as great cars, and not any 7 built since. Their successor, the E65, regularly consumes this amount of money in 3 years, easily. Make it an E60 M5 or E63 M6, and you can all but count on $5,000 yearly expenses.
When I say I believe BMW has lost its way, it’s not because of the X6, or 5GT, or whatever 438isIOUxdrivedynamic35i they’ve come out with. That’s just serving holes in the market, and we can’t blame them for that. It’s because at the end of my day, they’ve gone from being an engineering company that builds cars capable of 300,000 miles on regular maintenance (several of which I’ve owned and loved) to a marketing company that builds cars that are taking themselves apart by 100,000 miles. Because I’ve seen this, I will never own a BMW newer than a 2005 E46 M3. Dealer auction lots are filled with late-model BMWs in all variety of distress, I’ve seen them. The N62 V8 is a disaster, particularly in turbo form. I have an N20-powered 528i in now with failed timing chain guides, a 3 year old car with 63,000 miles, and BMW has politely told them to piss off. The paint starts to fade within 5 years, the weatherstripping shortly thereafter. The quality that BMW was known for simply isn’t there in the long term. They’re great under warranty and for a bit thereafter, but woe betide the person who buys one after that. There are exceptions of course, people who have had 150,000 miles on oil changes alone. I’m here to tell you, they’re the lucky ones.
I’ll bet the new M2 is a riot. I’ll bet the new 7 is a nice place to be. But in 10 years, this car will still be on the road, and those will be near death and languishing on the lot at Slick Jimmy’s Used Cars, waiting for a sucker.
66671 - 200 [METRIC] my dash
> RallyWrench
02/12/2016 at 21:17 |
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This really isn’t helping my insatiable desire to own an E38.
Nibby
> RallyWrench
02/12/2016 at 23:10 |
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need
E92M3
> RallyWrench
02/12/2016 at 23:43 |
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I just spent 14 hrs replacing the electric water pump on an E70 X5. I hate that f-ing car. They didn’t consider any maintenance when they designed the engine. I know it’s a modular engine made for several models, but my god they could of gave some room to access stuff. A $10 O-Ring could cost $1000+ in labor to replace.
unclevanos (Ovaltine Jenkins)
> RallyWrench
02/13/2016 at 00:01 |
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Pre-facelift E38 is best E38.
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RallyWrench
> unclevanos (Ovaltine Jenkins)
02/13/2016 at 11:10 |
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I like these headlights best too, but I wouldn’t turn down an ‘01 740i Sport.
Nauraushaun
> RallyWrench
02/14/2016 at 01:52 |
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That’s just serving holes in the market, and we can’t blame them for that
I say we can blame them for that, and here’s why: perhaps they’re spending so much money developing niches on niches, they’re cutting corners elsewhere. Like the less visible metric of how the cars fare after 5-10 years.
Back when they made the E38 how many cars did they produce? Z, 3 coupe, 3 sedan, 5, 7. Their market share came from developing and maintaining 4 products.
These days that same market share is spread across 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 series, X1, X3, X4, X5, X6. And some of these like the 3 and 5 have a GT variant. Many of these cars share platforms and bits, but it still must cost more to spread your resources across so many products.
The moral of this story is
always blame the X6 and the 5GT.
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RallyWrench
> Nauraushaun
02/14/2016 at 09:51 |
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This is a good point.