My X just turned 10 years old yesterday! And I love it more and more each day!
My wife drives an '11 Rav4 and is already bored of it after 2 years, she wants to cross over to Bimmers and hopefully in a couple years when her Rav is paid off we can "upgrade" her to an E70 late year LCI Diesel (the Rav is the daily driver and she cant drive stick so we take her car most places).
She says to me the other day
"Well your car is 10 years old, I think you might need to get a newer car before I do", and I said
"Why would I get rid of this car?"
She goes
"Well something could break, its old". I say
"Well besides the upcoming cooling system overhaul I will do next year preventatively, and doing some rear suspension work I'm basically up to date on any and all maintenance, the M54 is an engine that can go 200k-300k miles, I only have 69k on it now! The transmission will outlive the car, whats the worst that can happen, AC system stops working? Even if I have repairs that total a couple grand, its still cheaper to me than a $400-500 a month car payment (5-6k a year)
She kind of thought of it all for a minute, and tried to tell me something else, but it was obvious that she was stumped. The age is not a factor, and being that I am extremely anal about preventative maintenance, that is not a factor either. I tried to explain that "old cars die" because people let them. The long and short of it is that most people buy new cars because they want something new to drive, but when you love your X as much as we all do, what else is there to drive?
Don't even get me started on what other all wheel drive, German tough, ultimate drivers machine SUV I can drive nowadays that is newer/more reliable than my X and ALSO HAS 3 PEDALS! Impossible. I would have to go to an E90, E60 or something like that to keep my stick, and god knows those cars can have just as many problems as our X's. Porsche Cayenne manual? Good luck doing your own maintenance, and staying within the family budget. But I digress.
I bring this all up because mD has 2 extra years on my X and his looks like it came off the showroom floor, amazing. Another 8 years and you can get historic plates perhaps, either way, cheers to your X's birthday and I hope you keep it throughout your retirement
