Road Trip

[ncamg]

Just a little story about our 06 X5 3.0 road trip this summer. Left town on June 4 with 46K on the odometer and headed west to Wyoming (2100 miles). Easy 3 day trip and very uneventful in the X5. This is a great highway car – quiet, lots of room up front, and a great view of the road. Spent the next 2 months mostly in Wyoming but took a 10 day side trip to the Oregon coast. We love the big sun roof – really provides spectacular views of the Tetons. For the whole trip of just over 8,500 miles the X5 averaged 23.2 MPG (on board computer). On the highway we would run 75 to 80 and in the parks we would do the 45 MPH speed limit. The only issue we had was on the way back to the Tetons. Spent the night in Twin Falls, Idaho and in the morning on the way to the interstate the tire pressure warning came on. After checking all four tires the left front was at 22 psi. Back to Twin Falls and to a tire store. An hour later back on the road with the small nail remove, the tire patched, and balanced. Everything OK. It got me to thinking if I had an E70. No spare and I might have had to wait around Twin Falls for a day or two for a run flat tire (or two) to show up. Instead of $15 I would have at least one more motel bill and $300 to $600 in new tires. Our lease on this car was up in the spring. We looked at everything out there including the E70 and decided to keep the E53. Great decision. The dealer paid the last two payments and took $6,800 off the residual, did the CPO for $2,000, got 0.9% five-year financing for 100% of the purchase price. The residual was just under $30K and bought it out-the-door (tax, title, CPO, etc) for $25,500. Went from a $600 lease payment to a $450 car payment. BMW returned my 7 MSD’s within 2 weeks and I got a $500 rebate from the BMW CCA.