I posted here about 1 week ago with an enquiry on fuel consumption and mileage in an X5 I was buying. Subsequent to this I got an independent vehicle inspection report drawn up. The report was largely good, with some items which the vendor was willing to repair such as the fan belt being split. The big problem however was that the report indicated that there was deformation under the left front underwing. The deformation was detected on the inside of the bumper, the outside looked fine. In addition to this on further inspection I noticed a small part of the air grille under the bumper on the right hand side had also been repaired, quite badly I might add. Underneath the car was no better, all the attachment points between the bumper and the car's underbody were either broken or missing and on looking at the bumper head on it was slightly lower on one side then the other ( this took a very close inspection to determine, if you weren't looking for it you probably wouldn't notice). The vendor assured me that it was probably the result of just a minor knock it had received. Either the owner had a parking accident or perhaps someone reversed into him. In either case he stressed to me that the main structure of the vehicle had not been effected and it was shown to be ok on the vehicle inspection report. Eventually after much discussion he offered to replace the bumper.

In the end however I decided to walk away based on the fact that
1. The vendor had told me there were no accidents and subsequent information showed that he knew that it had this knock. If he was lying about that what else was he not telling me ?
2. Anyone who had an accident and got his vehicle repaired the way this had been obviously didn't care for the vehicle.
3. The car was 3 years old and had only 10,500miles on it. I was happy the first 2 years it was seviced under the BMW warranty but for the last year it probably had not received any service. (not really a major deciding factor with only 10,500 miles on the clock).

So was I right to walk away ? I have been second guessing myself ever since as it really was a beautiful X5 with everything I wanted and more on it.