I read a very sad and ironic story on the M5Board this week. A guy named Tom Ranck had owned his 2000 M5 since new, and had driven it for 276,000. Roundel, the magazine of the BMW Car Club of America, ran a profile piece on Tom and his car in this month’s November issue. The same week the article came out, Tom had an accident and sold his damaged M5.
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Here’s the M5Board thread in which Tom explains what happened.
The accident had nothing to do with DIY maintenance. But in the article Tom talks about the high expense involved with maintaining his M5 at his local BMW dealership. He had numerous issues and tells Roundel he wishes he sold the car way back at 80K miles.
Had he done just a little of this work himself, or went to an independent mechanic rather than the dealer, he could have saved a lot of money. Then maybe he would not have hit the breaking point after the accident, and could have spent the money needed to repair the damage above.
Conjecture I know, and to each his own of course. This kind of ending just seems a shame after over a decade owning an incredible — albeit high maintenance — vehicle.
Found you via Bimmerfest where I’ve found info for all sorts of DIY on my 2000 E39 – and saved myself 1000’s$ (literally) in the process.
Agree that if he’d done some of the maintenance as DIY, he would not have been so frustrated with the high cost of maintaining. Cannot imagine how much he spent at the dealer over the years to get 270K+ miles out of an M5!
However, some people just don’t have the DIY gene – although I am a firm believer that if you can read, you can teach yourself to do just about anything!