Originally Posted by barbja

I had a 7yo E53 3.0 that, when it was clean, a few people actually had asked me if it was new ('scuse me?). Yes, I know that the body style is different than an E70, but they didn't know any better. BMW just doesn't change their body styles drastically enough so that you can drive a car for a really long time and it will look new. I loved that car and would have kept it if the repair bills weren't getting too high, but that's another story.

However, how much it will be worth? You need to run the numbers for a similar car for how long you want to keep it on kbb or Edmunds. At the time I traded mine in a 7yrs, it was worth $12k. I think it was worth $30k at three or four years. I ran the numbers on a 2005 4.4 with some nice options and 72k miles (about 12k per yr) and came up with 18k/20k (tradein/private party). A 2004? 16/18.

I used this method when determining if I should lease vs buy. And when I determined buy, how much money I needed to put down in order to have the equity I wanted after 3yrs. (There were a whole lot of other factors in the lease vs buy decision too -- MF is bad on a 35d, and I live in Texas, which is not to favorable state for leases.)

You have to educate yourself on leases before you negotiate one with the dealer. It takes some time, but if you know your stuff, you can find where they are trying to cheat you. Especially if you know how to calculate MF into an interest rate, and what the MF they are receiving directly from BMWNA (ie, so that you can know what the dealer is upcharging on you -- you want to shoot for BMWNA+zero).

It made my CA go slack-jawed when I asked him "why on gods green earth would I pay you 9.5% for this lease when my credit rating is 820? You know that you're only allowed to add .0000x to BMWs money factor. What is going on here?" CA: Pause....Ummm...let me go back and check...she must have gotten something wrong... Ya, right.