Another thing to consider about them is that they're worth their weight in gold in terms of minmising door dings.

good point FastBuck. My running boards did save me on a few occations on getting those nasty dings.

i never realized! you are absolutely right.. i'm not going to complain anymore.

Reasons why I did not opt for the running boards

:confused: Did not look stream line with the dotted surface

:dunno: Would probably be hard to keep clean with the uneven surface

:( I not like the reflection of the aluminum dotted surface on the side panels.

When I bought my X5, I did not like the look because they stuck out too far and the reflection of the board and dots spoiled the smooth sides.

Since then, they have grown on me and I have seriously looked into buying and installing them myself or having them installed. Unfortunately, there are a enough posts out there, on this forum and others, about problems with staining and lack of functionality to counteract all the positive comments.

So, because of the doubts about quality and functionality, and the HIGH cost of buying & installing them, I don't recommend doing them as a retrofit.

Great responses! Thanks for all the input. Now here's another question: Has anyone tried to install running boards themselves? I looked at the instructions for installing and while it doesn't look overly complex, it also doesn't seem like a slam dunk.

I'm also thinking that if I do decide to get the running boards it's probably not worth installing myself and possibly screwing it up. The boards themselves are $495 on couple of sites. I got a quote for $1000 installed. Probably worth having a pro install them...