Hello,
I'm concerned about it becoming a money pit as well.
BMW's are not bad vehicles, but when they break, they break the bank too.
Also, every used car in GA right now, especially high end vehicles, make me suspicious because of the recent weather. It is shocking how many flood cars get onto the market with clean titles, so be sure to have ANY used vehicle inspected by an ASE certified technician as a pre-purchase inspection. If the owner/lot does not allow this, keep looking.
All that being said, I love German vehicles, and my wife still drives her 2009 ML350. She does not drive an X5 in particular because I refuse to own a BMW out of warranty, and I plan to keep her vehicle for many years (kids).
This is a solid car, with excellent safety measures and solid "crash zones" (not that we'd anticipate that for our kids right!?).
How many miles are on this car? The good news is you are in the "second generation" X5 in that year, which means some of the kinks are out of the model. And they are made right here in the USA (in South Carolina!)
DO NOT BUY THIS however without a pre-purchase inspection (PPI) -- we can do that for you and give you a list of items that may be needed right now, and you can go back to the seller and get those done and/or negotiate price. Then we can give you a bit of a road map of what types of expenses you might be dealing with based on the miles on the car and expected usage.
To address your question about the "cost of repairs" for BMW's it's a bit of a counter-intuitive answer, but we have 100's (1000's?) of German Car "lovers" who swear by this brand for the solid engineering it has, from the factory and through doing normal repairs through it's life. The cars are "over engineered" -- that's why we have customers with 100-200K, even 300K miles on these cars through regular maintenance. "Total cost of ownership" can actually be lower when they are well maintained!
We'll be happy to take a look at it -- bring it in and we'll do a PPI for you -- call for appt or come to web site!
Best,
MMW
