2nd BMW 330e- why so many with high mileage & would it put you off them?

dinneenp

Hi,

Looking at a 2nd hand BMW 3 series/330e- trying to keep budget under 20k if possible. With diesel you'd expect high mileage per annum, with petrol not, with petrol-hybrid I'd have expected not high either. High for petrol I'd be thinking 20k miles or more is high, would presume same for petrol-hybrid.

There seems to be a large proportion of 2nd hand 330e's with high mileage, any reason why & would it put you off these? Some examples-

https://www.donedeal.ie/cars-for-sale/bmw-3-series-330e-m-sport-330e-phev-step-auto-sta/28893345 (171, 132k miles)

https://www.donedeal.ie/cars-for-sale/161-bmw-330e-hybrid-rear-camera/28411408 (161, 112k miles)

Cheers,

Pa.

wotzgoingon

Your right too. Who the hell buys a petrol hybrid and puts that type of mileage up in 3 or 4 years.(depending on how long it's been sitting waiting to be sold).

Buddy Bubs

I'd guess it's trying to keep it under 20k is filtering out the lower mileage cars. It's a 45 to 50k car when new and I'd 4 or 5 year old, the best examples will still be over 20k. Cars expensive now. If things stayed as normal I'd expect great examples at 20k, but not now.

dinneenp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117777073#Comment_117777073

The problem with filtering out 20k+ cars is the price increases significantly. I'm guessing the advice would be to avoid the ones with higher mileage per annum?

antfin

Potentially higher mileage because they're UK imports and there were benefits for UK companies to use hybrid cars in place of diesel over the last few years. But that's just a guess.

On a side point, I wish car sellers would stop converting everything to miles on advertisements when we use KMs in this country but it just makes their number look smaller!

mickdw

I think they were very tax efficient for UK company buyers who were not paying the fuel bills anyway so reps would have bought them

Buddy Bubs

Yeah I suppose that even though you're looking at spending around 20k which is a big chunk of money, you're scraping the bottom of the barrel for this particular model. It's a premium car and an expensive one. And cars are holding value very well now. As for avoiding them, I'm not sure. My cousin is a bmw mechanic and I recently asked him about a 2017 or so 530e and he said he hasn't seen many of them in for problems yet. I believe they're a fairly reliable car.

The problem with an early 330e is there's no alternatives for a cheaper phev in the class as it's kinda the first of its kind. And the electric only range is much less than the 330e on sale today and that may be extended further with next one.

It could take a big drop in value if you put big miles on top of big miles and the market returns to sanity.

But as for the car, I like them and if I had a ceiling of 20k and really wanted a phev I'd buy one and get it well checked out.

com1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117777069#Comment_117777069

British company cars... round trip from London to Manchester once a week adds up to about 20,000 miles per year

Buddy Bubs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117777131#Comment_117777131

Probably very correct. They got tax breaks for PHEV's for company cars

bazz26

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117777069#Comment_117777069

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117777131#Comment_117777131

This.

They introduced company car tax breaks in the UK to encourage companies to buy or lease them. Unfortunately alot of them are also basic rep specs too as adding options pushed them into less favourable tax brackets.

ShadowHearth

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117777311#Comment_117777311

To add to this. There were a lot of reports that these rep cars were barely charged. Most of them were used as petrol cars.

To look at this from a bit different prospective:

100k miles for diesel is pretty much nothing. Even so, BMW with 100k miles could be a very mixed bag.

100k miles on hybrid that potentially used only petrol engine majority of its life with added bonus of it being few hundred kilos heavier then normal 320i would be. On top of that condition of the battery can be not in its best shape if it was not used properly.

To add more to it, you will be looking at early models with 100k miles+ of first Phev stab by BMW. For me personally it does not give a lot of confidence.

If I would even consider myself going with something like 330e, it would be only from BMW main dealer with their own 2 year warranty. That obviously will push budget up.

dinneenp

I'm now looking at a 3 or 5 series BMW instead, after changing my mind to my driving is OK for a diesel.

User1998

To be fair, the high mileage ones will be one company owner, have full BMW service history and mostly motorway miles. I’d have no problem buying one

Buddy Bubs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117782268#Comment_117782268

Fair enough but you're going to come up with same budget issues for 320d as 330e trying to keep it new and low mileage. They're just as expensive. 5 series for 20k will be defo the f10 which ceased production in 2016. Even at that I can see you only getting as far as 2015 for 20k.

dinneenp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117782950#Comment_117782950

Saw a nice 2015 diesel with 160km in the clock here. Would expect diesel to have higher mileage

https://www.donedeal.ie/cars-for-sale/bmw-5-series-5e32-4dr-auto/28312332

dinneenp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117782310#Comment_117782310

That's true. I might phone and ask re the previous owner, use, service history.

Buddy Bubs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117783023#Comment_117783023

Have you looked at msport models? They'll be dearer but far better looking cars than SE. Keeps fresher looking for years