I currently have a 106 mile commute and was getting pretty tired of averaging 18mpg in the Marauder. Honestly I'm also just getting pretty damn tired of DDing a panther platform car, I've been in them since I was in high school.
A friend of mine who works at a BMW dealer bought this car off a customer 2 months ago, he's moving and doesn't have room for 3 cars and doesn't need 2 E46's (his daily is a 330xi 6spd that he bought off trade in). I've been looking around for things like E39 530i's but bad ones are bad and nice ones are reaching into the 8-10 grand range which at that point I'd buy something a lot more modern. I'm looking to go back to Japan next year and bring home an Evo 4 so I didn't want to buy a 10-14 grand DD a year before buying a 10-14 grand travel souvenir.
This 330i is essentially a one owner car (if you exclude my friend's 2 month ownership), it came with all the service records since new (a literal inch thick), it's sitting at 134k miles and has no rust. Apparently the first owner was always given a company car so this was a garage kept second car all its life.
It's not as fast as the Marauder but it moves well enough and certainly handles a lot better. Since most of my commute is sitting in traffic I'll take the trade off in power for MPG.
For anyone who speaks BMW, it's a Premium pkg car (heated montana leather seats, myrtle wood, rain sensor), xenon headlamps and the ZF5HP19 5spd auto. No sport/ZSP package here. The auto works fine but by late this year I really may do a 6spd manual conversion.
I'll give this thing a paint correction in the spring but the paint is in great shape, the pass front fender was replaced due to a minor fender bender about 6-7 years ago, all parts used were BMW OE thankfully.
A friend of mine who works at a BMW dealer bought this car off a customer 2 months ago, he's moving and doesn't have room for 3 cars and doesn't need 2 E46's (his daily is a 330xi 6spd that he bought off trade in). I've been looking around for things like E39 530i's but bad ones are bad and nice ones are reaching into the 8-10 grand range which at that point I'd buy something a lot more modern. I'm looking to go back to Japan next year and bring home an Evo 4 so I didn't want to buy a 10-14 grand DD a year before buying a 10-14 grand travel souvenir.
This 330i is essentially a one owner car (if you exclude my friend's 2 month ownership), it came with all the service records since new (a literal inch thick), it's sitting at 134k miles and has no rust. Apparently the first owner was always given a company car so this was a garage kept second car all its life.
It's not as fast as the Marauder but it moves well enough and certainly handles a lot better. Since most of my commute is sitting in traffic I'll take the trade off in power for MPG.
For anyone who speaks BMW, it's a Premium pkg car (heated montana leather seats, myrtle wood, rain sensor), xenon headlamps and the ZF5HP19 5spd auto. No sport/ZSP package here. The auto works fine but by late this year I really may do a 6spd manual conversion.
I'll give this thing a paint correction in the spring but the paint is in great shape, the pass front fender was replaced due to a minor fender bender about 6-7 years ago, all parts used were BMW OE thankfully.