I was just thinking about how many of you guys stateside have white cars and thought I'd have a quick look at the largest german online second-hand car site www.autoscout24.de to look at some statistics of various things in Germany.

I found that there are currently 11,564 E60s for sale at the moment. By E60, I mean a BMW 5er from 2004 onwards. You can't specify E60 specifically, only a model (5er) and a year range. To ensure I didn't include any E39s I made the search start from 2004. Here's what I discovered. First section is the options, second is the colours, third is the engines.

Diesel = 8,777 (76%) ** Diesel fuel is about 10% cheaper than petrol in Germany **
Air-Con = 10,378 (90%)
Metallic Paint = 10,142 (88%)
Park DC = 10,035 (87%)
Navigation = 9,844 (85%)
Xenon = 9,718 (84%)
Sunroof = 6,079 (53%)
Touring = 5,328 (46%)
"X" models = 604 (5%)

Black = 4,833 (42%) ** not sure if it includes carbon black, probably does **
Grey = 2,815 (24%)
Silver = 1,976 (17%)
Blue = 1,170 (10%) ** not sure if it includes carbon black, probably not **
Green = 181 (1.6%)
White = 107 (0.9%) ** no wonder I've never seen one **
Red = 37 (0.3%)

525d = 3,380 (29%)
530d = 2,897 (25%)
520d = 1,948 (17%)
525i = 770 (7%)
535d = 549 (5%)
520i = 367 (3%)
530i = 361 (3%)
M5 = 123 (1%)
545 = 97 (0.8%)
550 = 91 (0.8%)
540 = 55 (0.5%)
535i = 2 (0.02%)
528i = 1 (0.008%)

If I add the 545, 550 and M5s together, they only reach 2.7%. Including the 540 and 535 it's still only 3.2%.

Summary:

Germany loves their diesel torque monsters but of the 76% of E60s that are diesel, only 5% of those are the top diesel 535d. With diesel being about 10% cheaper than petrol, and the better mileage, diesels are winning the day. The big petrol models (540+) accounting for slightly more than 3%.

As for colours, it's black, grey, silver and blue dominating and mostly metallics. These four colours account for over 93%, with white only being about 1%. Germans simply aren't turning onto white cars. They were supposed to be making a comeback in the last year or two but that isn't happening much with BMW drivers.

Well, the wife is finally ready (how can it take 25 minutes just to dry her hair?), research time over.

 

nice topic , thanks in keep us informed of what's going on globally.

 

Good info, thanks for posting

wish my wife takes 25 mins to dry her hair = more time to browse the board LOL!

 

Thats some eye opening stuff right there.

Biggest surprises for me are that over half of the cars have sunroofs, there are fewer silver than I expected and there are so few 535d's!!

 

I am not surprised at a tiny number of 550s for sale and that the number of M5s for sale exceeds that of the 550. When I have been outside of the US, I have seen many more M5s than 550s. 550s don't seem to get much love outside of the US.

 

More M5s than 550s? Amazing-

But- what about manual transmission vs. auto? Germany (and rest of EUrope) must be higher than USA right?

Curious...

 

Many countries tax the hell out of cars for big engine size.

 

I find it funny that they sell very few X models in Germany, and we have so many of them here.

Sean

 

X models are really big here in the Northeast. I don't think they sell nearly as well in our warmer states.

 

I just looked, 71% of those 11,000+ are automatic. The form on the site doesn't only asks auto or manual, so there's no way of knowing how many are SMG.