dominica

I like you ride man......good. While you are checking all those fabulouse ride out there, look at mine in the gallery undre user name Dominica, and tell me what you think.

Peace

stu

Welcome. Great pics gudge.

How much % discount do you reckon you got?
Do you recommend the dealer?

Finally, just one more Q.
What child seat do you recommend for a 15kg 20month old ? Our youngster is outgrowing his present one fast!

Gudge

Thanks. For car seats I use Britax Eclipse. Its forward facing. Quite heavy if you keep taking it in and out of the car......but otherwise good. Should last the baby until about 2 and a half years.........at which point we switched to a booster seat (one with a seat back too).

In terms of discount it's difficult to tell......my car is on a lease, and I do low mileage.
But if I give you some headline numbers and assumptions, you can probably get an idea:
List price - ?35,000
Residual value after 2 years c. ?22,000 (Although I bet they mark it up on forecourt for closer to ?28k!).
Taking account of my deposit and monthly repayments, I believe I have got a discount of between 12 and 15 percent.

Does that sound good?
Personally, the main criteria for me was affordability..........I could so I did !

mathmos

that is a good discount. My dealer told me (and I have no reason to dis-believe him) that UK dealers get 8% off from BMW so that is the margin you have to play with when dealing with them. However if they meet their sales targets then BMW increase that margin to 10% and back date it. Now some dealers are prepared to offer discounts upto this 10% based on them expecting to achieve their targets. Others are not prepared to take this risk so you only have upto 8% to play with.

mathmos

I'd go for an ISOFIX child seat. We put my son in a Britax Duo Isofix when I we had an X-Type and much prefer the ISOFIX way the seat is attached to the car rather than using the seatbelt to fix it in. We felt the seat was 100% secure.

The Britax ISOFIX isn't tested with the E60 unfortunately so don't know if it would work or not however i believe BMW do their own ISOFIX seat.

My son is now 4 and has moved onto a booster seat but ISOFIX is definitely the way to go IMHO in preference to to seatbelts.

Gudge

Mathmos, I think I also bought around the right time too........end of March, that is when dealers are trying to meet their sales targets. I got my deal from HR Owen Holland Park.........but I test drove the car at Whitehouse Ruxley.......and I was surprised to see that Ruxley came very close to the HR Owen deal........within ?15 per month.........but they said it would be conditional on me taking the car before the end of March......hence the good deal. They were actually quite peeved (but pathetically helpless) when I told them HR Owen were beating their deal, and giving me the option of an April delivery.
They gave me the usual crap like........."I'd be very surprised if there isn't a hidden catch in that deal sir".

But get this, HR Owen were even more cheeky; they registered the car in March........thus getting their sales bonus, but didn't give me the car until late April..........BMW Financial Services dated my hire agreement to run 2 years from 31 March. When I told them I only got the car in late April, they weren't too happy about that. But it was not my problem, and I think they sorted it with their dealer.

My advice is if you are buying new, then do it in late March........the dealers are bending over backwards to meet their volume targets.

Gudge

Almost 2 years on (I'm a bit lazy about cleaning !).........some further pics.
No, the car is going back in a couple of weeks (2 year lease ends), so I thought I'd post some pics for posterity.

dawi

Don't know what you mean, the car looks as good as the day you got it - can't see any of the stone chips on the front like I have on my one year old.

Have you moved house as well? What are you getting next - an LCI E60?

Gudge

Here she is: Details on my new signature.

rjcastr

congrats it looks hot