Trust me, I know what I'm getting into. I've owned 2 E39s, and the M5 is more expensive to fix than an X5... though to be honest in the 6 years I've had the M5 (damn, I can't believe it's been that long) it's actually been relatively reliable. Still that said, my 540 before that with the same 4.4 engine was a maintenance hog. Water pumps, power steering pump, coolant system twice, various hoses, 2 interior door handles, 2 exterior door handles (really... BMW can't get a door handle right... my Nissan Pathfinder has a quarter million miles and it's still on its first set of door handles) MAFs, CPS, and a ton of other crap.... so I'm used to the maintenance of this car. In fact, the main reason I went for the 4.4 X5 was because I thought I was familiar with most of what was going to go wrong and I knew I could work on them....

That said, the only thing I'm really shocked about with the X5 that I have to be worried about is the transmission. Both of my E39s were manuals and I never heard of people complaining about their automatic transmissions on the E39 board so it was an oversight by me in totally forgetting that the X5 would have a completely different transmission because it's all wheel drive.

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Matt Atkins
'01 Titanium Silver X5 4.4
'01 Lemans Blue M5