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Comment by switch007 | Hacker News Reader

My E46 in that purple blue will forever be my favourite car. The purr of the straight 6 was lovely

Just a shame they built the cooling system with such poor plastic parts that were prone to failure.

My first car was E46, used one already 100k km on it (put another 150k before transmission died), had a diesel V6 (travesty, I know). But it was still a very fun car with ridiculously low fuel consumption, total average was maybe 5.5l/100km.

It was so cheap to run for me, maybe I was lucky. Now sporting petrol 5 series F11 and much less impressed, I think thats it for me and BMWs. Things I didn't even know are there break and way more often, electronics and sensor seems like really bad ones (weird warnings, I have to reverse super slowly to not hit anything since it reacts with quite a delay).

I did a hell of a lot of maintenance on my e46 and I think 2010 plus or minus 5 years were not the best modern BMW years. Things like plugs, ac compressor, idler pulley, coils, and the impossible to remove wheel bearing.

I guess I’m a glutton for punishment as I’m about to get a bmw with a hot vee twin turbo V8. Not sure if the older n63 with technical updates is better or worse than the detuned s68 they are using now.

The coolant inlet flange on a friends ~2015 730d, made of plastic, cracked recently. To remove & replace it you have to pull the whole inlet manifold and a whole host of other bits off.

This is a sort of weakness of BMW’s IMHO. It’s too easy to accidentally break some plastic bits while servicing the car and/or engine. It’s the same on their bikes in my experience.

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