New Guy Intro

[davintosh]

Greetings and Salutations!

This looked to be the most active forum for the e53 X5s, so thought I'd sign up. I'm not an X5 owner at the moment, but about to become one; my wife decided it was time to graduate from the minivan phase and wanted something a little more upscale, so we found a 2001 X5 3.0/5-speed in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area for a decent price.

Checking out the car turned into a bit of an adventure; we live about 4 hours away in Sioux Falls, SD, so we decided to make a car shopping weekend of it. I lined up several cars to look at and my wife made arrangements to spend the night with some old friends in the area. We got there late Friday night & planned to go check out the cars on Saturday, potentially driving one of them back with us. But while chatting over coffee on Saturday morning my wife started having some nasty chest pains; next thing I know we're blasting down the freeway on the way to the heart hospital ER in downtown St. Paul.

At first the ER doc didn't think it was a heart issue -- the friend we stayed with had had a heart attack four years ago, and had a fresh bottle of nitroglycerine tablets on her, and gave two to my wife while we were on the way to the ER; no effect. But the EKG they did when we first arrived at the hospital looked odd to them, so they had another one done an hour or so later, and it looked different, which raised a red flag, and we weren't going anywhere but to the cardiac unit. Blood work done throughout the day showed elevated levels of Troponin, an enzyme that is a good indicator that the heart is in distress; it was a heart attack. A mild one, but still a heart attack. So she was scheduled for an angiogram, which couldn't happen until the following Monday. We were stuck. I got a hotel room, and tried to keep the two of us from dying of boredom for the next two days.

The angiogram revealed a narrowed artery feeding the back of her heart (the left circumflex coronary artery), so a stent was inserted and some clotting cleared... Pretty amazing what they can do. But the procedure happened too late in the day for us to get out Monday, so night three...

I was able to duck out a few times to check out a couple of the cars I had on my list, and the X5 was by far the sweetest one. Sport package, 5-speed, 18" wheels, factory towing package, super clean, good maintenance records, meticulous owner... I caught the BMW bug several years ago and have bought and worked on a few older ones (e32, e28, e34 & e36). I'm a little partial to the inline six, and loathe automatics, so this X5 fits my preferences perfectly. The owner & I agreed on a price, but he wouldn't let me take it just then; he had had it in the dealership for a repair last week and they had to order a part to complete the work. It was scheduled to go in today (Thursday) and I could pick it up after that. Got a message from him earlier today that it's ready to go.

So, I'm planning another trip to the Twin Cities this weekend. Hoping this one will be less eventful, and considerably shorter.

Here are some pics that I grabbed from the CraigsList ad for it; anybody know the car?