A barrage of bad luck
2001 BMW 530i Sport manual
Owned by Joe Breeze (joe.breeze@bauermedia.co.uk)
Time owned 19 months
Latest/total miles 964/115,229
Latest/total costs £0/£1327.45
Previously O2 sensor replacement, new tools
Well, I was asking for it really. In my last update I was halfcomplaining about the lack of urgent tasks the E39 had thrown at me during the first 18 months of ownership. It was inevitable that problems should then start to arrive – gradually, then all at once. First, early on a February morning, I was rearranging our cars on the driveway and, with condensated mirrors and bleary eyes, backed the BMW straight into a van that’d been left slung partway across.
Regardless of the driver’s wisdom in abandoning his grey van in a no-parking zone on a foggy morning with no lights on, the fact remained that I had struck a stationary vehicle, so no-contest on the insurance front. My insurer would cover his repairs, but if I claimed for the damage to mine – a cracked bumper and frustrating scrape down the nearside rear quarter panel – it would write off my car on age alone. And you could guarantee the loss adjuster would ignore XLA’S rarity elements – I reckon it’s one of about 15 manual E39 530i Sports left on the road – and pay out average E39 market value, which would inevitably be skewed to the downside by the prevalence of rusty automatic hacks still somehow clinging onto their roadworthiness. I couldn’t face dooming XLA to a dreaded Cat rating, so I decided to take it on the chin and ponder the Breeze-funded path forward.
I managed to reattach the bumper securely and then was forced to use the car for a house clearance, which did its overall state no favours. The brutal barrage was finally complete when poor XLA suffered two more prangs in as many weeks at the hands of scrape-and-escape drivers in retail parks. I was able to trace one of them, but Northamptonshire Police was disinterested in pursuing a ‘Leaving the scene’ charge, and the guilty party’s insurer would rather write my car off than consider repairing the damage. Another blow to take on the chin, then.
All of this has left XLA looking forlorn, and in need of some TLC. The question is, how much do I furnish it with? I could get the damage repaired, address the burgeoning bubbles appearing in the typical E39 spots (sills and rear slam panel) and treat it to a full respray – investing more than the car’s value in the process. Or I could spend the bare minimum and demote XLA to ‘enjoyable hack’ status, funnelling the funds towards a more glamorous companion with which to enjoy the forthcoming show/events season. The decision is pending, but my eye is already wandering…