I've been looking at 530d Beemer's for a few months and there seems to be a lot of good ones going for round the £3000 mark at the moment. I spotted this baby in eBay for slightly less than that figure and I kept coming back to it until I took it for a test on Sunday. It was out in Sheffield though, some 70 miles away, but I was after the cleanest example I could find and this was it - a tad over 100k miles, full BMW service-history and one owner from new who happened to be a doctor :), so it was worth the trip. We pored over the car and the body and interior are like new. The test drive went well too - no shakes, rattles or rolls, everything seemed to work.
It had no tax however, so we eventually agreed to give the meagre asking price when they offered to buy 6 months for us, as well as doing a full valet, topping up the levels and replacing broken bulbs. This is the first time I've bought from a used-car dealership and I may not have been able to haggle them, but there's no denying the service was top class.
Once I'd navigated this gargantuan behemoth through the nearest Maccies drive-thru though I started to think I should have bought another 3 Series. Some of the poise seemed to have been lost in the all the size at first, but its something you quickly get used to and the 5 is every bit as precise and drivable as its smaller brother. The comfort on the other hand is definitely in a higher series - it sails over potholes and grids with the smallest imaginable interference.
We'll see what I have in store for her when the dust settles, but I'm already brimming with ideas haha
