Okay guys. Thanks for the feeback thus far. This is getting a bit more serious as I have located an '05 3.0L manual for a reasonable price. Anyone else have a comment on this?

JCL and Jobaker4 - how much of a load did you guys tow with no self leveling? My car trailer (dual axle) is fairly sensitive to the height of the tongue or it will overload one or the other axles which typically results in a blow out. I think that will be true of all dual axle trailers.

Anyway, getting close to pulling the trigger on the manual X5 (well as close as I can get since the car is about 300 miles away) and still nervous.

Thanks,
Tom