reliability of used cars in BMW 5 series bracket

On 12 Feb 2005 10:36:16 GMT, Adrian assembled some one and zeroes in mesage id :

The original K certainly seemed to be more reliable. I drove the 16v 1.4 for 100k and never had a head gasket go bad. Only the later Ks developed this habit. I have heard from Rover engineers that the dowels were a serious issue. Metal dowels would align the gasket and head much better than the plastic ones.

I also heard that the K was never intended to go above 1600 cc as a four cylinder. My bad experiences with this engine have been with 1800cc BMW era units.

But this might be a coincidence.

No coincidence - it only affects cars between 1996 to 2000 when Phoenix took over from BMW....

The Ford won't.

I have no experience of the Mk1 Mondeo so won't comment but do have experience of the Mk2. Mine now has 124,000 miles and still feels great. It's well screwed together, nothing falls off, the plastic quality is fine, and I'm very happy with the car. Condition wise, it's just as good as the 98 model we owned from 6 months old until 4 years old and sold at 50k miles.

It's not BMW quality, obviously, my parents just bought a 2002 530d and you can tell which is the more expensive, better quality car, but then that was £32k new and my Mondeo was a good deal cheaper new. It's certainly on a par with other cars in the same price bracket.

If somebody nicked it tomorrow I'd go right out and buy another which I guess is the best recommendation I can give a car. I've had it a year this month, it's been fantastic and I thoroughly enjoy driving it every time I go out. It's absolutely loaded with every extra I'd ever want and more, it's very comfortable, it handles well and it cost under £3k for a 4 year old car. Can't argue with that, IMHO. Similar Passats were 6-7 years old, were lower spec (Very hard to find a very high spec example) and cost the same amount of cash. Build wasn't THAT much better either. Not bad, just not better.

But then I'm the guy who had an old, high mileage Citroen Xantia which also didn't fall apart, didn't cost me a fortune, didn't break down all the time and had a perfectly reliable hydraulic system.

Well... mine's a 98R, cost me £2k and is SE spec. That gets me all the kit I could think of other than leather. It's infinitely better built than a MkII Mondeo - and still feels like a brand new one. A colleague has a similar aged Mondeo and it drives like a bag of loose spanners, not to mention the naff quality cloth and plastic interior.

Even you yourself have admitted you got a pretty good deal on that - a 98R Passat 1.8 20VT Sport books at £4-4.5k private with average miles, whereas a higher spec 98R Mondeo 2.0 Ghia X books at about £2.7k. At those prices, I certainly don't think the Passat is worth the extra money. There is nothing about it, in my opinion, that is worth £1500 more. At the price you paid? Excellent value for money and easy to see why you recommend them - I'd probably have bought one myself, or at least looked a lot more seriously at them, had 1.8T's been around at £2k.

Plus, I bought my Mondeo a year ago now. I looked at Passats - I had no bias towards Mondeos before I bought mine (I've only become a huge fan becuase I've been so impressed with mine) - and they were nice, but older and I didn't notice the build quality being that much better.

See, I didn't really see this. There were bits of the Passat I preffered - notably the quality of the plastics in areas you cannot see, where it is better than the Mondeo, but then there were bits of the Mondeo I preffered - the soft touch dash I felt much more pleasant than that in the Passat. There certainly was no 'infinite' differences between either car. Had the Passat been an infinitely better car I'd have bought one.

The difference to me came down to the fact I could get a slightly newer, better specified Mondeo for the money, and they looked better than the Passat when fitted with the Sports Appearance pack (Mondeos can be quite bland without). That was it. Neither car was head or shoulders above the other. The Mondeo drove and handled better, the Passat was marginally better built overall.

A BMW 5 Series is considerably better than both of them. But also considerably more money, so thats to be expected.

But of course we have no idea how this car was treated in its previous life. For all you know, it could have been driven by a complete muppet who didn't give a crap about it, and suffered as a result. I know somebody with a Passat like that. He's had it years, he couldn't care less, and the damn thing is a wreck. I know better than to judge all Passats by the awful example he has becuase it's not down the car that it's like that.

Wouldn't know about the naff quality cloth, as mine as leather trimmed ;) And I like the visible plastics - but I will concede that the plastics on the side of the centre console where it goes into the footwell are a bit nasty.