I'm not familiar with US dealerships but in switzerland its quite common for them to wait to have an interested customer to do repairs. Its dumb but its how its done.

The salesman could have been better but maybe he tought it would take an hour and the shop couldn't do it in time.

I think what I am is a lot less interested in this dealership...;)

There's a wide variance in how it is over here...but to me, it's just unprofessional. it should not be the potential customers job to find any issues with a used car. They should be found by the inspection process at the dealer before the car goes on the lot. Otherwise, if a potential customer finds an issue, it could be perceived as the dealership trying to hide something....and the used car industry, in general, already has a huge trust barrier to start with.

I happened into E53 3.0i. I was sad about the lower horsepower until I discovered the relatively lower maintenance on the engine. I'm a HP addict and probably would get the 8 if I had the choice but wife and I both have 3.0i. Almost 300,000 miles between them with very little problems but they are both 01 and at the point that parts regularly break. That said, wife has been averaging $80/mo and mine has been averaging $40 / month. That includes all eight corners brakes and four wheel bearings. Her car needed both front CV and bottom control arms (that's why her average is higher).

DIY or a trust fund are the viable options for having and old x5. Prices on parts are very reasonable. Alternator $300 (refurb for $20), ac compressor as low as $120. The biggie of older 8 cyl are either the transmission or worn parts in the valve hardware so do some homework to determine how to test. Some good examples above how to test the transmission. In Wisconsin you can back out of any contact wirhin 72 hours so if similarly maybe you can do some heavy duty testing right after buying or maybe an extended test drive 24 hours ?


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I think you should be happy about it that they told you BEFORE you got there. Maybe its a sign the vehicle isnt for you!

Very true.

Andy,

Did you end up Making a move on the truck? I checked the ad today and he price seems to have gone up by $1000. I find that interesting.

I did not. Salesman contacted me back and told me the window regulator was fixed and asked if I wanted to do a test drive. Then he said "The car is good to drive. There is an airbag light on that we are going to fix but other than that car is good". Really?

Maybe it's just me but...a dealer shouldn't ask me to test drive a car with something safety related known broken after not letting me test drive it with something as mundane as a broken window regulator. I told him to call me when there were no codes on the car. Their response was apparently to raise the price by $1000 since they just put some labor into getting it ready. Not comfortable with this dealer at all now.

Personally I would take a drive. If its just airbag i wouldnt worry your not driving cross country. I would be more concerned about the misfire or coil pack issue you noted earlier if thats been resolved.

Just curious, how many of these have you ridden in or drove? If the answer is 0 you need to drive it so you start to understand the good ones from bad ones. Just my .02

The price went up as they said in prior ad was only good for black friday, it was a sale.

It was the lack of self-awareness on the airbag thing, to me. I get what you are saying.

I do need to drive one, but that one is over an hour away.

I would hope they would honor their sale price as I *tried* to drive it the Saturday after Black Friday...we'll see if they ever contact me back.