Life has a way of taking you down unexpected rabbit holes. I was reading the NY Post one night, and they were talking about Kanye West’s trucks being auctioned. Seems when Kanye and Kim split, he decided to sell his ranch out West, and the associated Ford trucks.
I went to the auction site, and bid on a couple of them. There were a couple of Raptors (too rich for my blood), some Expeditions, and a few F-350’s.
I was interested because my youngest son was going to need a car (or truck). You may recall we bought the 2000 GMC Sierra for a runabout for him during his gap year, but at 22 years and 245,000 miles, we were not willing to let him drive it 8 hours away to college. Our handyman’s Nissan Titan truck also finally died on him, so we were going to give him the Sierra and let him work it off.
I rapidly was outbid, but in perusing the offerings of the same auction house, I saw that they had a 2015 BMW X5. It looked great in the pictures, and though it had high miles (159,xxx), it was a turbodiesel.
It was a no reserve auction, the high bidder gets it. The pictures were fairly comprehensive, and it was billed as a two owner car that had spent it’s life in Washington State.
Through my Carfax app, I could add the car to my “garage” and get a free Carfax, more or less. The Carfax app doesn’t show everything, but it shows the service history. There were 33 (!) dealer or indy shop service records for the X5. Together with looking clean in the pictures, it was clearly a well maintained car.
I also knew my son would love it. It would be a great “college car”. The bloom was off the rose, so to speak, which was a good thing. It would be sitting outside, maybe parked on the street a lot, carrying a lot of college bros, and somewhat abused. He could haul all his stuff to and from school. There was a pretty high likelihood it would be a reliable car for the next three years or so, even with those miles. If it were gasoline instead of diesel, I would have been a lot less interested.
I texted him about it, and he was on board. He loved it! The 2015 BMW 328i GT COAL I wrote up had been “his” car in high school, but his older brother took it to college. The X5 was black on black like the GT, and my engineering major younger son really liked that it was a diesel.
So, I bid a max of $11,000.00. The trade in on KBB was about $19,000.00, private party $21,000.00, and dealer retail $24,000.00, even with those miles. It was pretty loaded up, with 19″ wheels, heated seats front and rear, heated steering wheel, power tilt/telescope wheel, heads up display, navigation, full LED headlights, roof rails, all the nanny features (360 degree cameras, lane keeping, blind spot, pedestrian detection, emergency braking), panoramic roof, 4 zone climate control, all wheel drive, and leather (optional, yes).
Well, we won! $10,500.00 was the final bid and together with the 10% buyer’s premium and $100 doc/temporary Washington State tag fee, the final price was $11,650.00.
The catch? Well, I am in North Carolina and the X5 was still in Washington State, where it had spent it’s life. No bother, I love to drive and who doesn’t love an excuse to drive 2,618 miles across the country?
My wife did not share this outlook, and declined to participate. So, I bought a one-way ticket on Delta to Washington State for under $350.00. I plotted out two reasonable stops to get back to North Carolina rapidly (Salt Lake City and Kansas City, Missouri), and booked some cheap motels on Priceline (about $70 each night, the one in SLC was great but Kansas City was pretty sketch).
As my wife dropped me off at the airport at 5:30am, I thanked her for being supportive. “Supportive is an overstatement” was her reply.
My flight departed North Carolina at 6:30am (this is the sunrise from my window) on a Friday. With “gaining” three hours, I landed in Washington at about 11:30am. I took a taxi two miles to the auction house, certified check in hand.
The car was, overall, way better than I expected. The lead picture, as well as these two, are what I took at the auction house as it was presented to me. This car was CLEAN. Cleaner than a lot of used cars at dealerships. There were WeatherTech mats front and rear, and in the cargo area.
The windshield had a gnarly crack all the way across, which did not show in the auction pictures. But, the Nexen tires had good tread and a late 2020 date code. I was assuming it would need a set of tires, which it didn’t, and a windshield from Safelite was cheaper than a set of tires. So, no harm, no foul.
The auction site expressly stated that while they attempted to represent the cars well in the pictures, they were not inventorying defects either.
After checking all the lights, fluids, and tire pressures, I set out for Salt Lake City about 1pm, which was about 9 hours away. It is a weird feeling to set out into strange surroundings, in an unknown car with 159,000 miles, to drive 700 miles into the night. The thought that I was crazy crossed my mind more than once, but we arrived in SLC Friday night without incident.
One the way to Kansas City Saturday, we went through a car wash in Nebraska and got the “full treatment” for $20 and change, with wax and tire gloss, interior cleaning, and detailing the wheels and door jambs.
SLC to Kansas City was a long day, about 14 hours with stops. The speed limit from SLC to Kansas City is 80 pretty much the whole way, so the cruise was set in the 80’s all day. And, you can see the fuel mileage we are getting. That’s not an “instant” mpg, that’s the average since I left Washington. When I sent this shot to my wife, she started to come around. “If it can do almost 90 for three days with no issues, it must be a good car”.
When we arrived in Kansas City, I went to get takeout and passed an O’Reilly car parts store. I bought wiper blades which were sorely needed, and tire valve caps (two were missing). I took a picture at the dive motel before I turned in for the night.
The third and final day on Sunday was less taxing, about 800 miles home from Kansas City. There were no issues for the whole trip. I have not found anything that doesn’t work correctly, so far.
Of note, my lower back hurts quickly and easily on road trips. My back did not hurt at all after three days and about 32 hours of driving. The seats are very “supple”, more Cadillac than BMW. The heat feature gets very hot, quickly. I would take these seats over the massaging ones in my 740e in a heartbeat.
Today was 82 degrees in North Carolina, so the A/C was tested for the first time and cooled the X5 down well after sitting in the sun all day.
I have an appointment for Safelite to come to house and replace the windshield soon. There is also an outstanding recall for the fuel pump which affected all diesel BMW’s, and I have an appointment at the local dealer for that.
It looks great in these pics, and from 10 feet away in person, but there’s extensive road rash on the front as you would expect with those miles. I have some black tinted wax, and a few coats of that with the power buffer should help a lot. I’ve ordered a new engine air filter and cabin filters off rockauto.com, because I can’t be sure when they were last done, and they’re cheap and easy to do.
We’ll check in about a year and (fingers crossed) hope we have good things to report!
“but at 22 years and 245,000 miles, we were not willing to let him drive it 8 hours away to college”
You thought a dirt-simple Chevy truck with one of the most reliable, overbuilt motors in automotive history is risky, so you buy him a high mileage tech-laden diesel BMW?
I’m just sitting here shaking my head.
For what its worth I just took my wife and two year old son on a 1000 mile road trip this past summer in the same generation GM truck with 300k miles. We did have a minor hiccup where the AC belt tensioner pulley locked up (possibly picked up some sand from beach driving). Fixed it in the hotel parking lot that night in about 15 minutes with a basic socket set, local Autozone had the tensioner assembly in stock for $30.
My sentiments exactly—shaking my head and perhaps scratching it at the same time.
As a Dad of a semi-new driver and another one coming up the ranks, I think Importamation may have been alluding more to the safety and driver aid side of things. Assuming there is winter where he lives, a RWD pickup without stability control or even traction control is not an ideal vehicle, things can go bad in a hurry. Sure, it’ll do the job if everything goes well, but if for some reason something were to occur resulting in injury or worse it’d be hard to not feel guilt, especially as there was clearly no economic reason for the thrift. If that truck is all you can afford, then sure, you do the best you can with what you have but I don’t think the money is a big factor here. I know you have a new kid yourself and you’ll likely agree your worldview has changed a bit. Fast forward another decade and a half and assuming the finances allow I’d wager you’d rather your new kid driver be in something safe than something cheaper to fix especially if there are distances involved, given the choice. Not trying to start a pissing match, but if one can afford to give their kids the best chances in life, then a safe car is a good start for a not so experienced driver. Not just due to the kids themselves, but all of the other wackos out there not paying attention. You yourself are perfectly capable of (and happy) dealing with your 300k Suburban, but I doubt your wife would be as comfortable with the same problem had you stayed at home on that trip or (fast forward) your 16year old kid-to-be.
If there’s a problem with the BMW far from home, a tow truck will be called from the cell phone and the dealer will provide a loaner. And a bill will be paid…
Excellent take. Nearly 2 years ago as I started poking around for my daughter’s first car for college duty, I made a whole bunch of considerations. We had dibs on her grandmother’s RX350 with 180k miles (very well maintained), but looking at her driving comfort level I decided smaller and with the (reasonably) newest safety devices (she was a new driver) should be our target. I landed a barely used (4k miles) 2018 Rogue that has done a great job with her 200 mile ride to school.
I didn’t want to be “that dad” who got his kid a brand new car for their first, but the Rogue was a screaming deal (50% off msrp) and in perfect shape.
Kudos to Importamation for finding a great vehicle for his son that seems like quite steal….
Age and mileage specifically got brought up, I interpreted that first and foremost a concern about reliability, but the OP can speak for himself. One thing’s for sure: I won’t be coddling my son with late model luxury cars for his first vehicle.
“I won’t be coddling my son with late model luxury cars for his first vehicle.”
So he’ll be buying his own then.
I think Jim expanded on my thinking pretty well. I would set out in our 2000 Sierra cross country myself, and feel pretty good about getting there. But I wouldn’t feel comfortable sending my wife or son off in it alone, for a shorter distance.
It has quirks, such as being able to remove the ignition key while in “run”. So, you can remove the key without turning it all the way to “lock” when you park. My son has killed the battery overnight a handful of times, because the ignition was still on and drained the battery. That type of thing could ruin a road trip/leave a kid stranded.
I always just keep jumper cables as well as a little $20 jump-box in the back of my older vehicles. Isn’t he a Boy Scout or something? I’d feel differently about a daughter, but I always thought that the “crappy/older first car” experience that teaches a young man some resourcefulness and maybe some maintenance skills was an important part of growing up. Makes you appreciate your nicer cars later on that you worked and saved up for.
Then again he might just get that experience with this Bimmer… it’ll just require a $2000 scan tool to really be able to do anything, if you let him that is
He is an Eagle Scout! And I keep cheap jumper cables in ALL my cars. Never know when you, or someone else, could benefit from them. I have a $75 OBD reader from Amazon which has successfully read all the codes on all my imports for years. I am sure there are some situations/codes it would be stumped by, but I have not had one happen to me yet.
My apologies; Eagle Scout.
As far as scanners go, a basic OBD2 reader doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of the 50+ modules and CANBUS network in something like this IMO. A very budget friendly option is the Thinkcar ThinkDiag dongle, which is about $120 to buy and then an annual per-make subscription fee of $40. But this would give you true access and bidirectional control to the multitude of modules, etc. I highly recommend it. To reference killing a battery in the Chevy, to replace a battery in any remotely modern BMW, you need to have this level of scan tool to “program in” the replacement battery. And all that multitude of modules/electronics? A much larger draw when the car is parked (or God forbid one of said modules malfunctions and doesn’t turn off as expected). This level of electronics also necessitates having a good healthy battery in general, to keep the Christmas-tree dash at bay.
Couldn’t agree more, Jim. My niece, who I raised, was an awful new driver, writing off three cars – including mine – in not much over a year. Fifteen-odd years on, she still has some back trouble from the last one. (She’s now an excellent driver, btw!) If I’d had the dough, I most certainly would buy as safe as I could have (I didn’t, and couldn’t). Why not reduce the risk for someone in a big-risk category, if you can? Why not avoid potential life-long effects for the sake of “making them learn”, or whatever? God, cars are just transport, in the end: raise the kid with strong ethics and sense of the importance of kindness and their being “spoilt” by a new car isn’t going to make them a zot morally weaker a human being.
That said, I don’t have the nut size to do what’s been done here. Having owned a quite-new BM, and a lovely car it was, I couldn’t ever do so again. Routine, ongoing maintenance and niggly fails made it an atrociously expensive car to own – and I had one of the simple models that supposedly didn’t give trouble!
“was an awful new driver, writing off three cars – including mine – in not much over a year”
Should have been riding the bus after wrecking #2 lol
His previous COALs suggest that he is immune to the European car curse. Some sort of vaccine perhaps?
OK, admitted bias here. I am a longtime BMW driver. But BMWs are absurdly long lived and I’d not only trust a 150K BMW over a 250K Chevy, I’d trust a 250K BMW over a 150K Chevy. BMWs are somewhat maintenance intensive, but also tend to go to ungodly miles if not flat out neglected.
I don’t know this generation of X5, but the one that preceded it (E70) was an absolute dumpster fire. My brother does mobile diagnostics for a living so I get to see a fair bit of all makes/models and their various failings. If you consider $1700 DEF tank failures (level sensor fails and can only be replaced as assembly), or engine ground straps corroding in half, both of these issues inside of 100k miles, as “maintenance” well then you and I have very different expectations for our vehicles.
I got to the part “I texted him about it, and he was on board.” and was trying to figure out if there was any other possible response from an 18yo college bound kid. A BMW SUV to roll up to the dorm in? Sure, sign us all up! 🙂
You have some very large cojones, Sir, but that became evident with the Bertha S-Class and Land Rover stories (bets?). While not a big BMW fan myself for some inexplicable reason, I suppose a diesel one that seems to have been used as designed, i.e. frequent big mileage trips instead of around town use only, with low years, would seem to be as good a bet (or maybe better?) than the same car with a third of the miles, especially considering the cost. Even if it goes horribly wrong, at that price you can afford to just get rid of it and chalk it up to experience. I understand the calculus here.
I hope (ok, I know) he will enjoy it. Looking forward to the 200k update…
I am not a big follower of BMW prices but that seems like a whole lot of vehicle for the price. Nicely done.
There’s a reason for that… German cars depreciate quickly after the warranty runs out.
Yes, they do indeed. And if you are willing to “assume the risk”, you can get a lot of car for the $$.
There were 33 (!) dealer or indy shop service records for the X5. Together with looking clean in the pictures, it was clearly a well maintained car.
Or an exceptionally problematic one. 🙂
Seriously, it’s hard to fathom 33 service records for a car that age and mileage (159k is far from excessive or particularly high).
But if it was problematic, hopefully the issues are all fixed now.
“Or an exceptionally problematic one.”
That was my first thought too, but then I did the math. That is an average of ~4800 mi between trips to the shop. If the shop(s) that did the oil change put the next service due in 5k mi, and the owner followed that, oil changes alone could account for that many visits.
Yes BMW’s says 10-15k but many dealers will tell you it is needed much more frequently. I found several pages very similar to this when I looked for the factory intervals.
https://www.bmwofannapolis.com/bmw-x5-oil-change-frequency-annapolis-md/
https://www.richmond-bmw.com/bmw-oil-change.htm
This isn’t really a fair comment to make, but I’ll pile it on 😀. I’m not sure that I’ve made 33 service visits (not including tires and smog checks) for all my vehicles combined in over 45 years of car ownership. And I’m not even 100% DIY like some CC’ers. But the comfort/safety/mpg blend of this car seems pretty good.
Some of those were tires, there’s a few Les Schwab entries for tires or rotations. A few dealer or indy entries for brakes, brake fluid exchange, etc. I added up all the oil changes shown, and it averages out to about every 7500 miles for those.
No clue how Washington works, but each yearly inspection in PA shows up as an individual Carfax service record. Add in a few tire purchases (these go through the factory runflats every 15k or so, and cheap non runflat replacements like Nexens can last 20-25k), a few stand alone oil change visits, and some registration and title transfers when it was new and recently as it changes hands, and 33 records really isn’t that crazy over 10 years and 160k miles.
No mechanical inspections in WA and this wouldn’t have been subject to emissions inspections, when we still had them as it was not in the part of the state where they were required and the first test was at 6 years old.
413 lb-ft at 1500 rpm. Your son may lack for things in college, but torque won’t be one of them.
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But seriously, different strokes for different folks. I would never have made the decision to put a college student in this vehicle, but hey… As has been noted, the kid will definitely enjoy it. My guess – based on what my kid (who rides the bus…a lot) messages me about (with pics) from his college campus – is that he won’t have the nicest car on campus by a long shot. Such are the times in which we live.
Even if some stories detail decisions that I personally would never make, I still enjoy reading about the thinking that goes into whatever writers want to tell us. Frankly, Importamation’s vehicle history probably tracks quite well with the mainstream high-end car owner. More people than not are in that mainstream. So it’s all good.
BMWs are far from my favourite brand but their diesels do have a good rep and they go very well I had some unexpected fun with someone driving a 3.0D sedan O overtook him and a couple of clicks later he did the same to me with a wave I was already 20kms over the speed limit so I put my foot down and gave chase up a nice twisty rural road the BMW could easily out accelerate my 2.0 diesel 4 but he wouldnt go past 130kmh so was easy to stay with however he was braking into turns I dont slow so much for sioI simply gave him a longer lead to avoid having to brake, an enjoyable trip.
The 3.0D in particular is stonking, but my mate’s X5 with it cost him $2,500 when the watercooled(!) alternator died (a not-uncommon occurrence, it seems). I don’t agree with you that BM’s aren’t great to drive, but they are best owned by someone who is not me.
I’ve mentioned above why I’d do something similar for a kid if had the money, and also why I couldn’t do it with a Beemer. The part of this tale that looks almost bizarre from these far-off shores – and really would mean a young driver was just being over-indulged – is that the cheapest 2015 3.0D X5 I can see here is $45,000! (They were over $100k new, though likely nearly all leased).
Where are you! In the USA this 2015 X5 was about $74,000 USD as optioned out, when new.