BMW 316i 2007/8?

mankteln

Would be interested to hear everyone's opinions on the 3 series from this era, had my eye one a nice looking one on donedeal (full service history and fairly low mileage) but unfortunately as I was working I wasn't able to get over to see it and went quick. Currently driving an 03 Daewoo and doing fairly large mileage (160km maybe 4 days a week and frequent enough longer drives from Clare to Derry/Dublin/Kildare) so definitely need to move on to something a bit bigger before the poor thing gives out on me, it's behaved itself so far so don't want to push my luck!
Open to any other suggestions too, only coming to the end of my first year NCB (although I'm now over 30 and have the license a few years it wasn't used) so engine size due to insurance is a major limiting factor. Having been thinking about maybe a 1.6l A4 (and in moments of weakness a Mercedes C180 coupe) but realise I may be being foolish and should limit myself to a Polo/Golf or Hyundai accord/i30.
Would be interested to hear anyone else's opinions, especially if they're in (or have been in) a similar situation to myself!

bazz26

Buy something else other than one of these entry level premium badged cars with a poor engine. Build up your NCB in the meantime and then buy something a bit more decent down the road.

JC01

Good cars but that's a hateful engine.

At your age you should easily enough insure anything upto a 2.5 you just have to be forceful with the insurance companies.

mankteln

JC01 wrote: »

Good cars but that's a hateful engine.

At your age you should easily enough insure anything upto a 2.5 you just have to be forceful with the insurance companies.

Yeah I can get a quote for most but anything with a larger engine comes back well over 2.5k, will continue shopping around but don't know if I'll be able to get it down a huge amount until I've a longer NCB.

I get the point at not just going for an entrance level premium brand car but to be fair they're a similar price to some of the other brands and (some) seem to be better maintained which is a big thing for me. What cars would you suggest given my mileage? Something like a corolla be sufficient? Would you stay away from 1.6L engines in general? Thanks for the replies

JC01

mankteln wrote: »

Yeah I can get a quote for most but anything with a larger engine comes back well over 2.5k, will continue shopping around but don't know if I'll be able to get it down a huge amount until I've a longer NCB.

I get the point at not just going for an entrance level premium brand car but to be fair they're a similar price to some of the other brands and (some) seem to be better maintained which is a big thing for me. What cars would you suggest given my mileage? Something like a corolla be sufficient? Would you stay away from 1.6L engines in general? Thanks for the replies

It can be tedious but Iv had a lot of joy with companies by just being the most annoying customer possible to get decent quotes, Iv insured various "uninsurable" cars by literally ringing 20 times over 2 or 3 days and haggling like hell to get a quote, Iv found call center supervisors have a huge amount of discretion in pricing quotes so you may want to try that, just be super polite the whole time but stern in that you want a competitive quote on a normal car as a person who is relatively low risk.

To answer your other question, a 2.0 BMW should suit your needs well, just look for the lowest mileage you can afford.

With other cars there is nothing at all wrong with a 1.6 in a corolla/focus/civic etc but they can be very underpowered in a decent size saloon car e.g. A 3 series, plus the lowest model of each cars tend to be the worst maintained in my experience.