Well it was a beautiful day so I made the most of still having a soft-top and drove down to a large independent BMW supermarket which always has 10-20 X5's in stock.

There were two that caught my eye; a late 2004 in Titanium Silver with Black leather and a 2005 in Black with Sand Beige leather. Both had approx. 60k miles on the clock, both were 3.0d Sport.

Personally I think Titanium Silver with privacy glass and running boards looks very nice from the outside. I was disappointed with how tatty the interior was. It was dirty, smelt funny and the seats showed quite a lot of wear. The carpet in the rear was worn to the lining by the doors and there were water marks visible as mats had clearly never been used. This one didn't have NAV and there was a line of pixels flickering in and out on the radio display. Definitely not interested

I had concerns about the Black one after taking a walk around and noticing the rear passenger side wheel arch trim had some pretty deep scuffs with traces of white and blue paint. The rear quarter showed a lot of buff marks where it had obviously been freshly polished. Of more concern was that the rear door didn't seem to be lined up correctly as it stuck out a little too much. Looking down the side of the car I would have said the door was aligned but the rear quarter panel had been compressed inwards slightly in a low speed bump against something big like a pillar, wall or truck.

Ignoring that, the interior was clean and relatively intact apart from the steering wheel trim peeling off around the buttons. The Sand Beige was nice but I think without privacy glass it made the cabin too bright. It had NAV with TV which worked although the TV reception was awful; is that normal? I had a poke around in the boot and looked in the area around the spare wheel. It was dripping wet with condensation. The the entire area was wet to touch although there was no standing water at the bottom. Still not good with most of the electrics living in there. It did make me wonder whether the damage to the rear could be due to flooding!

Despite these issues I still took it out for a test drive, just to get a feel for the car and see if I could detect any lurching. When I turned the ignition on the message 'check brake linings' flashed up on the dash. I pretended not to notice but was obviously not impressed. I was impressed by how quietly the engine runs and how smooth the ride is. There were a couple of roundabouts on the test route and I couldn't detect any kind of lurch despite trying. Obviously after just getting out of a 2 seat roadster it felt like driving a tank but I had a similar feeling when I got in to the Cayenne I had on courtesy last year. It soon wore off once I got used to the different driving position.

So overall it was a bit of a disappointing day. The quality of cars available, at least from that particular outlet seem quite poor. I'm now less concerned about 'the lurch' and think a lot of it may be down to drivers being too aggressive and not taking in to account that they are driving a 2.5 ton truck with a TD engine (lag) and automatic transmission (more lag).

Sorry for the mammoth post but I wanted to share my experience so far. I'm still a little sad at the thought of not being able to drop the top and go for a drive 'just for fun'. There were a few nice Z4's on display which caught my eye