fishskis

Lowest Reliability Rating?!

As someone who is picking up a new 545 in a little over a month, this concerns me.

I have discounted much of the negative talk on this forum, attributing it to to a few things:

1) The 5 is a new model, it takes a year or so to get the bugs out.
2) BMW was overly ambitious on the tech side. Hopefully software updates have addressed this, and will contiinue to do so.
3) It is the nature of a site like this to be populated with very demanding, difficult, picky people (of which I am definitely one) who have very high standards; so problems may be overemphasized.
4) It is human nature to talk about the negative. On a board like this, many people post to try to get answers or solutions to their problems. Given this assumption, a disproportionate number of posts would relate to problems, relative to the actual number of problems in a random sample.

Am I being too forgiving towards this car? I am currently driving a 2002 M3 convertible, which I love. Maybe I'll just keep it another year. I am excited about my new 545, and my planned European adventure, but I don't want to buy a lemon.

So...Is Consumer Reports accurate? Should the 5er have the lowest possible reliability rating? If so, has BMW fixed these problems?

Thanks.

David

I have an 10/04 535d Sport which is a great car to drive and my fifth BMW, my last car was an E46 M3. This car is undoubtedly the least reliable car I've owned though all the problems are electronics or idrive related. My idrive has mysteriously locked up a couple of times (dealer can find no trace), my bluetooth phone has picked up someone else's telephone (again dealer can't help) and I now have the fairly common problem with the anti trap side window function going awol. The thing that bothers me is that the dealers seem unable to rectify these problems and they don't seem particularly strong on product knowledge...the standard solution seems to be "update the software" which doesn't seem to be working.

Great car but I think the electronics are at best patchy...jury is out for me. Very tempted by an E90 335d when it comes out....without idrive.

RoBMW

So, your not alone.... even in the Netherlands i've got the same impression. I'am afraid, the E60 is not the most reliable car. My former 5 series, were better. And it's true.... the dealer has not the knowledge of the car, specially the electronics! The only solution they have is, update software.
And still the 'automatic headlight' don't work properly, for example

530E60NL

No problem over here.

Had a few issues in the first 3 months of ownership but I've had that with every former car I ever owned.

Now everything is fine and I have no problems at all..

For me this is the most reliable car I ever owned (untill now).

andy545

8000km later....still no problems to worry about.

SanCarlos

The Consumer Reports statistics apply entirely to the 2004 model year. After having read this board for about a year, it is my impression that (notwithstanding the problems that some are clearly still having) the frequency of problems reported has dropped significantly and that some of the software updates in the last six months have solved a lot of issues. Of course, that is entirely anecdotal, but I would be interested to hear whether those who have had cars delivered in calendar year 2005 are experiencing many problems. Those cars should have the benefit of new software without the problems associated with updating existing software.

johno535

My last e60 was 525d had it for a year never had one single problem nothing came lose or dropped of rattled or broke I felt confident that I had a good product
the only problem I had was when the wife came out with me a kept asking me to slow down, that was the only thing i wanted to come detached

Euro Speedster

Thats why you dont buy first model year cars!

cashvanveen

And don't I regret it!
7 months and 7 times in to the dealers for electronic related problems. Off the road for 3 weeks in this time and we have done 5000 miles.

Not good really!!

Guest

Yes, that is totally unacceptable. Mine has had several small issues associated with the electronics - all resolved to my satisfaction with minimum inconvenience (the exception is bluetooth which I am still upset about).