[ais]

Originally Posted by Akshay1234

The fog lamps don't switch on either. That is something which can be enabled with coding

In which model? LCI? I'm pretty dissatisfied with all the lights, headlight (no BEAM that illuminated road ahead) and the fog lights- my phone LED could do better!

[anandpadhye]

Originally Posted by ais

I'll be sure about visibility of craters/potholes/stones at reasonable distances only when I drive next time on highways at night, and I still have doubts due to the nature of the beams being widespread, not focussed as explained before.

Have you done the highway drives in the night to confirm if the problem is fixed?

Originally Posted by Dr.AD

If any of you have issues with these headlights, then the best thing is to ask the service center to re-align them until you find the perfect settings.

Yes, I am going to have to do this. As @ais mentioned, our regular phone LED is more powerful than this F30 LCI headlights!
Do you have any photos of whare exactly your high and low beams point at now?

[Dr.AD]

Originally Posted by anandpadhye

Do you have any photos of whare exactly your high and low beams point at now?

Unfortunately I don't have these photos. I will try to take some photos soon and post here.

However, looks like I spoke too soon when I said my headlights are adjusted well. I was happy with the results about a couple of months ago. But while driving back from Chennai to Bangalore in the night last week, the lights seemed very inadequate. Even the headlights were inadequate. Something had gone wrong. I am now in the same boat as you guys that I am not happy with the lights.

Now I am going to visit the service center soon and will try to adjust this again. I am really surprised that once adjusted lights can go wrong. Something is definitely at fault here. One thought - just a thought - is that the "self-aligning" mechanism which adjusts the headlights every time you start the car is probably not doing it well. How else can the headlight adjustment deteriorate with time on its own? One (or only?) possible culprit is this mechanism which is possibly messing it up.

I am not sure what is going on. I will try my best to find this out during my next service center visit.

[ais]

Originally Posted by anandpadhye

Have you done the highway drives in the night to confirm if the problem is fixed?

Yes, I am going to have to do this. As @ais mentioned, our regular phone LED is more powerful than this F30 LCI headlights!
Do you have any photos of whare exactly your high and low beams point at now?

Yet to do the testing at night. Will do around 22 August.

Adjust the beams yourself with a 6mm allen key.

[zebanaff]

Hey man! Just checking in to see if you've run into any issues with the car. Any surprises or expenses that you didn't foresee?

I just saw a really nice pre-owned 320D (June 2018) model, being sold by a BMW approved dealer, around 12k on the odo, but just a bit wary. I am going to go inspect the car and check out the service history, but just wanted to know how reliable the pre-owned BMWs from dealers like Navnit/Infinity Cars are. Also, generally for a year old car, would the original warranty carry over into the new purchase?

Sorry if these are stupid questions but I've never been in the pre-owned car market before!

[graaja]

Originally Posted by zebanaff

Also, generally for a year old car, would the original warranty carry over into the new purchase?

The warranty carries over into the new purchase. If you happen to get the car, get the maximum possible warranty which is 6 years, or at least get the 5 year warranty. That will give you so much peace of mind in the ownership.

[VineetG]

Originally Posted by zebanaff

Hey man! Just checking in to see if you've run into any issues with the car. Any surprises or expenses that you didn't foresee?

I just saw a really nice pre-owned 320D (June 2018) model, being sold by a BMW approved dealer, around 12k on the odo, but just a bit wary. I am going to go inspect the car and check out the service history, but just wanted to know how reliable the pre-owned BMWs from dealers like Navnit/Infinity Cars are. Also, generally for a year old car, would the original warranty carry over into the new purchase?

Sorry if these are stupid questions but I've never been in the pre-owned car market before!

Most likely, the car will have a 2 year existing warranty on it. Buy an additional 3 year extension, will cost around 1.5L for 320D. Will be very reliable, and you will have warranty to fall back on in case of issues. Should be a good buy if you get a good price.
Make sure you ask when the original 2 year warranty is expiring. And do check the vehicle service and repair history, just to ensure that it should not be a lemon.

Rgds

Vineet

[Dr.AD]

Originally Posted by zebanaff

Hey man! Just checking in to see if you've run into any issues with the car. Any surprises or expenses that you didn't foresee?

The car has been great. Apart from some minor and known issues like headlights (discussed in few posts above), which are common issues to F30, I had absolutely zero trouble with my car. In fact,the 320d has proven to be as reliable as my other car which is synonymous with reliability - Maruti SX4 :-) I just fill diesel, and take the car wherever I want without any worries.

I just recently completed 1 year (and 18000km of driving) with this car, and overall it has been an absolutely great experience. It is a lovely car to drive on highways. I wanted to post a 1-year update here, but been both too busy and too lazy for this yet. Will try to write an update soon.

I just saw a really nice pre-owned 320D (June 2018) model, being sold by a BMW approved dealer, around 12k on the odo, but just a bit wary. I am going to go inspect the car and check out the service history, but just wanted to know how reliable the pre-owned BMWs from dealers like Navnit/Infinity Cars are. Also, generally for a year old car, would the original warranty carry over into the new purchase?

If you like the car, then check service records and then go for it. Since it is June 2018 car, it still has original warranty, and most likely BSI too. The remaining warranty carries over to you. You also have the option to extend the warranty upto 6 years, if it does not already have extended warranty. If the car already has extended warranty and BSI, then it is even better. That would be a sweet deal.

So take all necessary precautions such as checking the service history and observing all parts with a keen eye, and if it comes out clean through that, then I would say go for it. Or rather more accurate to say would be that reliability would not be a concern on this car. F30 320d, after the LCI, is in the last phase of its life where all issues are more or less sorted out. This car is as reliable as any you can get in India. As reliable as a Maruti, from my experience of owning both :-)

[zebanaff]

Originally Posted by Dr.AD

If you like the car, then check service records and then go for it. Since it is June 2018 car, it still has original warranty, and most likely BSI too. The remaining warranty carries over to you. You also have the option to extend the warranty upto 6 years, if it does not already have extended warranty. If the car already has extended warranty and BSI, then it is even better. That would be a sweet deal.

So take all necessary precautions such as checking the service history and observing all parts with a keen eye, and if it comes out clean through that, then I would say go for it. Or rather more accurate to say would be that reliability would not be a concern on this car. F30 320d, after the LCI, is in the last phase of its life where all issues are more or less sorted out. This car is as reliable as any you can get in India. As reliable as a Maruti, from my experience of owning both :-)

Thanks! This is rather encouraging. Taking a TD in a couple of days. Exciting

Also, could I ask what the upkeep cost is? I understand luxury cars cost more to maintain, but what's a ballpark I'm looking at in terms of yearly routine service spends, insurance renewals, and anything else I'm missing?

[ais]

Service cost is about Rs.20000/- a year. When replacing parts like tyres and brake pads, costs are involved. In case of accidents, it's a high cost- at least Rs.25000/- for even a small dent repair or loss of No Claim Bonus. Insurance cost is proportionate to the value of the car of course.

[Dr.AD]

Originally Posted by zebanaff

Thanks! This is rather encouraging. Taking a TD in a couple of days. Exciting

All the best for your test drive!

Also, could I ask what the upkeep cost is? I understand luxury cars cost more to maintain, but what's a ballpark I'm looking at in terms of yearly routine service spends, insurance renewals, and anything else I'm missing?

It is not much. Certainly not much to worry about. The extended warranty from 2 years to 5 years costed me ₹1.42L, and I strongly recommend this (if the car does not have it). And the BSI extension from 3 years (my car has 3 years BSI already) to 5 years will cost something like ₹2.5L. But the good news is, once you take these packages, the maintenance cost is zero (for the 5 years)!

I have not spent anything at all on maintenance so far (except for some additional and voluntary things like AC cleaning, and wheel balancing and alignment which is not covered by BSI) because of these packages. From my experience, brake pads seem to be the most recurring expense since the brake pads on these cars wear out fast. Luckily, that is covered under BSI.

Even if you don't have a BSI, assume about ₹60k per year as the average maintenance costs (including 1 brake pad set per year). Of course, any unforeseen issue comes up, then that will be covered by extended warranty. BSI is only for routine maintenance.

In short, extended warranty is a must. BSI is somewhat of an optional thing in my opinion. Good news for you is that since that car is within the original warranty, you can definitely get extended warranty.

However, one cost not covered above, and that you will have to bear, is the tyre costs. Tyres (225/50/R17 RFT on 320d), can cost anywhere between 15k to 20k a piece depending on which ones you buy, and the RFT has relatively short life (25k km or so). So depending on your running, you can estimate the appropriate tyre costs.

Hope this helps. In nutshell, get the extended warranty and BSI, and then forget about the maintenance costs at least for next 4 years (total 5 years for the car).

[Dr.AD]

A couple of weeks ago, I completed 1 year of owning this car. In this year, I drove about 18,000km.

In summary, it has been a lovely car to own. I enjoyed every single moment with the car. The city traffic is not the ideal playground for this car (although it is still very comfortable to drive this in the traffic - which often means just crawling smoothly without any accelerator input). But it is on the highways where the car is just brilliant. It loves open roads. The highway drives have become absolute joy because of this car. The handling is perfect for the highways, the ride quality is just optimal, and the engine is damn good while cruising on the highways. The 400Nm of torque ensures the engine is never dull even at low cruising RPMs. And the little bit of the roughness which the engine has while idling or crawling through the traffic vanishes at highway speeds. The engine is creamy smooth at 2000RPM. A slight tap on the accelerator and the car joyfully pulls forward from any speed. A more than a slight tap on the accelerator, and even more fun begins. You can actually pull it very fast even when already doing very good speeds. And if there is a sweeping corner of the highway around while doing this, you are in for experiencing the "sheer driving pleasure". I absolutely love all those sweeping corners of my regular highways now.

There have been a few minor negatives too. The LED headlamps somehow confuse me. As discussed in a few posts above, once adjusted well, the headlamps perform well and many times I had good experiences with those. But sometimes it feels like the lamps are totally weak or the adjustment is off. Overall it is a very inconsistent experience with the LED headlights. I still have to figure out this mystery. And I still hate the lack of boot space. The space saver eats a significant space and on more than one occasion we felt shortage of boot space when carrying a couple of mid-size bags on long highway drives.


Cleaning and detailing: I never gave a bucket wash to this car. I will never do that. I wash the car once a month (or on rare occasions twice if really necessary) with a high pressure wash at a detailing shop. Other than that, I use a Jopasu duster whenever required. The red color looks brilliant when clean, but it also shows the dirt very clearly. The car often looks dirty a day after I wash the car. It is not at all easy to keep this car looking clean. At times I have just driven around with dirty car.

Talking about pressure wash, my favorite place for car wash is "Feynlab" in HSR Layout, which is one of the best car cleaning and detailing studios in Bangalore. I discovered this place when it had opened brand new, and since then, most of my team-bhp friends in Bangalore bring their cars here. I highly recommend this place for anyone to get their car washed in Bangalore.

One of those "clean" moments. The car at Feynlab after washing:



A "beauty shot" at Feynlab, after a through cleaning:

And some photographic effect to highlight "the eyes" :-):

BWW Advanced Eye 2.0 (BMW dashcam): Meanwhile, some four months ago, I got this BMW Advanced Eye 2.0 installed. It is BMW's official accessory and specifically designed for BMW cars, and integrates seamlessly with the car electronics. Just like most of the BMW official accessories, this is very expensive for what it is. I paid Rs. 46k (under some discount scheme, otherwise the MRP is even higher) for this, and still keep wondering why it is so expensive. Of course, being the OEM accessory with complete integration with BMW is big part of the price, and I am fine with that.

The dashcam comes with an Android and iPhone app, and the app can connect to the dashcam by WiFi.

The box of the dashcam:



This is how it looks on the front:



And on the rear:



And this it how it looks from inside:



Notice the rear dashcam coming in the middle of the IRVM, which is pretty bad and annoying till you get used to it:



The cameras are clearly visible from the outside in clean showrooms (as seen in the above pictures). However, it real-world conditions, with a little bit of dust on the windscreens, and the light reflections, it is not easy to spot the camera from outside. The below pictures taken in bright and dusty conditions show what I mean:








Overall, I have a mixed opinion about this. I still don't think the price is justified, and it has several shortcomings/bugs. The main pros and cons are as follows:

Pros:

• OEM accessory fitted by the dealer, and seamless integration with the car electronics - for example, the device operates differently in various combinations of engine ON/OFF status and car battery status. The device will reduce its functionality or switch off completely if the battery it too low while in parked mode.
• Being OEM accessory, it is "hard wired" and the wiring is well concealed. Being hard-wired, the operation is fully automatic and in sync with the car engine status. I don't even need to remember the dashcam is there. There is zero manual intervention required.
• Parking mode is cool. Based on radar and accelerometers, the recording starts in "parking mode" if someone comes too close to the car or if there are any movements detected around the car. Similarly, if someone touches the car, the recording will start too.
• There is no display on the inside. Thus, it is quite inconspicuous from inside. I don't like the dashcams with display inside, as I think that is very distracting, especially in the nights. This one is quite simple and clean from inside. Zero distraction to the driver. The unit hides behind the IRVM as seen from the driver's seat.
• It has a supercapacitor instead of a battery (thus no fears of heat related problems that batteries could suffer from).
• The WiFi connectivity is very useful for quickly watching the videos on the phone, and for the phone app to connect to the dashcam and change settings etc.

Cons:

• There are several serious software bugs. For example, the time stamp on the videos is often wrong. It is off by 30 minutes. Seems like the device has a trouble remembering Indian Time Zone (+5:30), and it resets to either +5 or +6 randomly. Only when the phone is specifically connected to the device and the phone app is up and running and connected to the camera it gets the correct tine zone. All other times it gets wrong time zone. This is really a serious bug. It is impractical to connect the phone app all the time and keep it running to get the correct time zone.
• The picture quality is about average. Many Rs. 15k dashcams will have a much better picture quality.
• The phone app is great for watching the videos quickly. However, those videos can't be transferred out of the app. There is no way to share or send those videos out, and those files can't be read by anything other than this specific app. This severely limits the usefulness of the app and the WiFi function. For all practical purposes, you still need to pull out the SD card and copy the files out manually for using them on any other device like your laptop.
• Given these limitations, the price feels ever more crazy. This one is one of the most crazily overpriced piece of electronics that I have ever bought.

Miscellaneous photo-shoots and drives: Throughout the year, I did many drives - a few solo drives, many team-bhp drives, and many photoshoots with close friends and their cars. The car loves open highways and it loves company. Every single of those drives was a joy and every single photoshoot was a memorable one. Sharing here some random samples:


"The Beauty and The Best". With bhpian KarthikK's red Thar:



With Robimahanta's beautiful 328 during a random photoshoot:





Some solo shots at that photoshoot location:









During the "Kolli Hills Drive", (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/team-...ml#post4608997 (Team-BHP Meet @ Kolli Hills : 22nd & 23rd June, 2019)), parked next to RSUDARSANAN's 320d:



With Fortified's Mercedes C250d:



A face-off with Graaja's 330i GT:



And a random solo shot at Kolli Hills:



Pure and Innocent Joy: Through the year of driving it around, one thing I experienced repeatedly is that the kids love the car. Maybe it reminds them of their own favorite red car in their toy set. Even the kid inside me thinks the same. This is my favorite toy car that has come out alive and become real now. Of course, I would have loved it to have the inline six cylinder petrol engine that BMW is (was?) famous for; but the kid inside me pretends to ignore this and nevertheless loves the red toy.

On that note, to conclude this update, here is a photo from the recent Kolli Hills drive, where three bhpian kids (including one grown-up kid - my friend and bhpian abirnale) posing joyfully with the car:

[deepfreak15]

Hope you don't mind. One from my archives

[zebanaff]

Originally Posted by Dr.AD

All the best for your test drive!

Even if you don't have a BSI, assume about ₹60k per year as the average maintenance costs (including 1 brake pad set per year). Of course, any unforeseen issue comes up, then that will be covered by extended warranty. BSI is only for routine maintenance.

In short, extended warranty is a must. BSI is somewhat of an optional thing in my opinion. Good news for you is that since that car is within the original warranty, you can definitely get extended warranty.

Hey! Thanks for this. Just a couple of last questions if you wouldn't mind, since I don't fully trust the sales rep I'm talking to.

1. My running is usually around 8k-ish a year. Would that still warrant a brake pad set every year? And also, how often would I be looking at a brake disc change?

2. With this kind of running would the base BSI package make more sense for me than the BSI Plus? Because it's really the BSI Plus that's running me out of budget here. I do understand that I could take a 3 year package now to save 1.3L and then upgrade it later. I'm tempted to do that, but would that turn out to be significantly more expensive in the long run?

3. The car I'm looking at has no BSI package, so if I'm buying it now (say a 5 year package), I'm told it would be retro-active from the date of manufacture. Is that correct?

Really appreciate your time. It's given me a lot of confidence to go ahead with this deal. I get the feeling I'm going to end up booking the car on Tuesday!

[graaja]

Originally Posted by zebanaff

1. My running is usually around 8k-ish a year. Would that still warrant a brake pad set every year? And also, how often would I be looking at a brake disc change?

Brake pad change depends more on the kind of driving you do than the distance. If you are a sedate driver, and plan your braking well on highways, then the pads may last 25000 kilometers or more. I remember a TBHP member whose brake pads lasted 30,000 kilometers.

On the other hand, if you are an aggressive driver who likes to accelerate and brake a lot as you negotiate traffic, brake pads may wear off as early as 15000 kilometers. I am mostly a sedate driver and occasionally drive spiritedly when conditions permit, and my front pads lasted 20000 kilometers. Rear brake pads are still going good.

Usually, the disk will be changed on every 2nd brake pad change. But in extreme conditions where the disc has also worn out, it may need change with brake pads as well. But this would be a rare situation.

Originally Posted by zebanaff

2. With this kind of running would the base BSI package make more sense for me than the BSI Plus? Because it's really the BSI Plus that's running me out of budget here. I do understand that I could take a 3 year package now to save 1.3L and then upgrade it later. I'm tempted to do that, but would that turn out to be significantly more expensive in the long run?

BSI is worth only if your running is close to or in excess of the BSI package. For example, if you were to take the 3 year / 40K kilometer package, your usage should be close to 15K kilometers a year to justify this package. For your usage of 8K kilometers a year, a BSI package is not worth IMO. A basic BSI package may be considered, but BSI+ is definitely not required.

Originally Posted by zebanaff

3. The car I'm looking at has no BSI package, so if I'm buying it now (say a 5 year package), I'm told it would be retro-active from the date of manufacture. Is that correct?

BSI usually applies from the date of first purchase/invoice, not the date of manufacture.

Good luck with the purchase of the 320D.