This week we’re starting with a quick experiment involving two piglets and two identical bowls of slop. What you do is put the bowls down in front of the piglets and then watch as each piglet immediately tries to eat the other one’s slop.
For pigs, and some humans, the other man’s grass will always be greener. It’s been a bit like that with BMWs recently. The puzzling uglification of the range has got many of us wishing for the good old days of the E60 saloon and the E61 Touring estate. All right, that might be putting it a bit strongly but you have to admit that, set against the current offerings, these gen-five Fives are starting to look almost attractive, just as Mrs Shed nearly does in the conjugal bedroom during a full solar eclipse with the blackout curtains drawn.
The E60/61 was the first 5 Series to bring various automotive miracles to brace-twanging execs looking for extra bragging rights in the executive washroom. These electronic trinkets included iDrive, head-up display, voice control and many others. Not all of them were an immediate or unqualified success. Twenty years later, they’re working nicely by and large, but back then some of these wheezes seemed half-baked. More than a few user-choosers became disgruntled at being used as unpaid development engineers.
Anyway, the E60 we’re looking at here is a low-miles (97k) 2004 530i SE. BMW used lots of aluminium for the front section of these cars so they only weighed 1,580kg, which seems like nothing nowadays. The 3.0-litre straight-six under the bonnet turned out 228hp at 5,900rpm and 221lb ft at 3,500rpm and made it a sprightly performer even with a six-speed torque converter auto attached. The 0-62mph time was knocking on the door of six seconds and the 152mph top end was fast enough for most.
Going back to slop for a minute, that’s what Shed gets for breakfast, dinner and tea seven days a week. Usually, it’s a vile confit of mutton, mustard and lard that Mrs S brews up in a pan once used by Shed to catch the oil dripping out of a Ferguson tractor. In the interests of economy, Mrs Shed brews up an enormous quantity of this mixture on Sunday and then reheats it in a warmish oven on a daily basis until it’s all gone. By Friday night some uninvited bacterial ingredients have joined the party, which is why you can never get hold of Shed on a Saturday.
Talking of dodgy motions, at least one of the tyres on this car is an RXMotion, a budget hoop sold by (among others) Asda. In better news, at least two of the others are Bridgestone Potenzas, which were once sort of premiumish until people came round to thinking that they weren’t that good. Still, even RXMotions are likely to feel less nobbly than the run-flats that many E60s with 17-inch wheels were forced to wear.
The wheels on this car look all rightish. There are a couple of parking dings on the bodywork but it looks reasonably unmarked on the inside. The instrumentation suggests that the car has been averaging 25mpg, which is slightly worse than the official combined fuel consumption figure of 28.5mpg, but shuffling a car about on a dealer’s forecourt will do that. On the open road, it should be doing nearly 38mpg, which is decent. The annual tax is £415, which isn’t.
The MOT runs to next February, the last test having thrown up little of any real concern. We’re told in the ad that it has a full history, that it drives amazing, and that, like the beaming postmistress, it’s just been serviced. That won’t make the N52 engine immune to problems with the coolant system (expansion tank cracks, electric water pumps, general deterioration in the hoses), oil filter and sump gaskets (leaks), VANOS solenoids (failure), and starter motors (ditto). Drains block up and suspension parts wear.
Ask yourself this though: what else would you get for your £1,795? If you’re the owner of a Rolls-Royce Spectre, the answer to that is 2.65 Rolls-Royce branded umbrellas. As far as Shed is concerned two-thirds of an umbrella is worse than no umbrella at all, making the two intact ones that are left even worse value. Disagree with that if you can.
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