Farewell

[tomsawyer]

I wanted to say “farewell” to you all. Even though I wasn’t a heavy contributor to the forum due to me not being so mechanically inclined, I do want to say thank you to anyone & everyone that perhaps helped me during what I’ll call the WORST ownership experience of any vehicle I’ve ever owned.

I originally purchased my X5 in March 2005 (I’m the original owner) and in the roughly 15 years and only 97,000 miles, I cannot believe the amount of money I spent maintaining this P.O.S. I’ll summarize – Valve Stem Seal $2,500 (side job by a BMW Tech), DISA Valve Job - $2,000 at the dealer, FIVE door handle repairs – $1,700 (3 @ the dealer, 2 side jobs), changed the coolant reservoir tank 3 times, 4 window regulators, all the brake lines rusted and were changed, changed the Nav screen 3 times. Never mind the regular maintenance items because that comes w/ the territory.

The straw the finally broke the camel’s back – got a MAF sensor code & the truck shutting off. I changed the MAF, code went away & the truck still shutting off, no codes, no vacuum leaks. Took it to 3 different mechanics (1 of whom is a BMW tech at a local dealership here in NJ) and no one can figure it out. There was no way I was taking this issue to the dealer.

Upon trading in this P.O.S. in, the sunroof didn’t work, navigation/radio no longer working, retractable mirrors not working, SEVERE battery drain (2 days and battery completely dead) and, of course, truck shutting off. Lest anyone think I abused this truck. On the contrary, I babied it. Mobil 1 oil changes twice a year, coolant flushes, brake fluid flushes, did a tranny flush at 50k, 100k tune-up at 75k, etc.

So, it goes w/o saying had I been more mechanically inclined, I would’ve saved money; however, I shouldn’t have to live my life maintaining a car for the privilege of driving it. I have had many cars throughout the years, Ford, Mazda, Mercedes, Lexus, Mercury, Chevy, Porsche and none of them ever came close to costing me what this truck cost to own. I realize no car is perfect but those other cars never gave me PTSD every time I touched the door handle wondering if it was gonna break again, never had a car the radio/nav didn’t work, never had a battery drain issue, never had a sunroof that didn’t work, etc.

Fare thee well. I won’t be back here in the future b/c I wouldn’t drive any BMW product even if they gave it to me for free. To prove it, I have made friends w/ 2 service advisors in 2 different BMW dealerships and they both told me separately that the BMW product is garbage and they see the horror stories all day long once the car is out of warranty.


Best of luck to you all!