reliability of used cars in BMW 5 series bracket

For my money the 2l CDT manual is the best thing in the range.

It goes well enough - certainly a damn sight better than the 820 Auto I had before it, cheap to insure, cheap to fix when it breaks which it doesn't much.

I tried the autos and they were a slushbox in the truest sense of the word. Even on the V6. The 1.8 was just nasty to try and drive - not enough grunt to pull you out of bed.

The biggest problem with the CDT is the turbo lag which is quite noticable all things considered.

IME the dealer service from Rover dealers is somewhat better than that from BMW and Merc dealers in the same areas - just less of a sense of arrogance, although that's not saying much.

Perhaps you'd tell my mate that?

Ferrari possibly need them because of their high rev limit. Anyone else with sense abandoned them years ago for road engines - unless simply saving production costs.

This is what troubles me. They owned the company, and sold off all the bits they could make money out of - Land Rover etc, but didn't want the K Series. And whatever anyone thinks of BMW, they have an eye for profit.

On the V6?

CHG failed on a Rover 75 V6? Reasons other than severe coolant loss?

Quite probably, but most ecotecs, most italians, most germans, in fact most new cars sold are belt drive.

Wasn't there some other reason for the Chrysler / BMW partnership? Other than that I still can't understand why they didn't sort the cooling system and use the K series - there's some question about K series and US emissions regs (can't understand that either) hence Lotus dumping it for the US elise.

No. I can't think of many V6s with anything more than variable cam phase, exceptions including the Honda NSX.

Tim S Kemp ( snipped-for-privacy@timkemp.karoo.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

I doubt it. Who owns Chrysler? The deadly enemy, the three-pointed star.

They didn't at the time the engine deal was agreed.

Tim S Kemp ( snipped-for-privacy@timkemp.karoo.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

I'd have thought they had PLENTY of time to re-negotiate the deal and even re-engine the car between the Daimler-Chrysler merger becoming public in May '98 and the Mini launch in March '02.

MINI launched in 2001 IIRC.

Tim S Kemp ( snipped-for-privacy@timkemp.karoo.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Mea culpa. July '01. I inadvertanly took the date from a 'merkin website.

So they only had just over three years between the public announcement of the merger and the launch of the car. Hiho. Complete cars have been engineered and launched in that time from scratch. Swapping a different lump in would be a doddle.

They have announced a new range of engines for the Mini - a joint project with Peugeot. It's taken them that long - as the engine was criticised from day one. Since the K Series is a fine engine apart from reliability issues, one can only conclude that those issues are fundamental and too difficult to cure. Or that it might not be suitable for further development - although BMW tend to introduce a new engine range every few years anyway.

"Dave Plowman (News)" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Which was... not much over three years ago.

Don't forget that BMW wouldn't exactly have opened the paper one morning and gone "Oh, look, Merc have announced they've bought Chrysler". They'd have had PLENTY of warning from Chrysler.

Which really does make you wonder why they persisted with the Chrysler lump.

I don't recall the early 1.4 in the Metro and Origami 2/400 having a bad rep

- just the later ones, particularly in the F. So perhaps it was a case of poor development to the larger capacities and/or poor quality control and/or poor cooling system design?

So why on earth didn't they produce a home-brew lump for it in the first place?

I had that as my sig once. Then again, I may have nicked it from you! :-)

One of life's mysteries. Perhaps the original intention was to make a cheap small car rather than a premium one? After all, the decision to by Rover must have been partially about going into the larger volume sector - until they realised their core business was more profitable and reliable. I don't believe the stories they bought it just for a few Land Rover patents.

Absolutely. All my tags are my own work. ;-)

It was BMW costs cutting that caused the problems when they made Powertrain a separate business unit. They replaced the original steel dowels with plastic and the rest is HGF history. MGR very sensibly changed back to the steel dowels as soon as they'd bought Powertrain back off BMW - which was sometime *after* they bought Rover off BMW.

Well, HGF on some K Series was common before BMW bought Rover. Perhaps they thought they'd found a cure? Can't see the difference in cost between a few dowels being a factor.

BMW use plastic for many things others don't - like thermostat housings. Did they change that too on the K-Series to save money?

ISTR that it was more to do with emissions and the cost of UK assembly than any quality issue with the engine itself.

My personal opinion is that it gave them an easy in and an easy out to the UK mainstream sector, they gained Mini, HDC and other 4x4 bits. Rover gained the 75 platform and a dose of reality, too much to swallow.

In message , Tim S Kemp writes

At one time there was a rumour going around that it couldn't be made Euro4 compliant. Apparently, that work has now been done.

Maybe it's the 100,000 mile durability test that it won't pass in the US?