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Why You Should Buy a Used BMW (Instead of New)
57K views
Jan 29, 2023
I have owned several used BMWs over the past several years. I have yet to buy a new one, besides the fact that I can't afford a new BMW, I probably would never buy one new anyways. This video details the various reasons why I recommend used BMWs over new BMWs in pretty much all circumstances. Even if you have the money for a new BMW and you don't care about the depreciation, I still recommend that you lease instead of buying new.
View Video Transcript
0:00
Hey, E36 Fanatics, Steven here
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I want to tell you about lately I've been on a couple of different BMW forums and watching a few different
0:09
YouTube channels. And I noticed that a couple guys were saying that BMWs are basically inherently unreliable
0:17
And what you should do if you're interested in buying one is buy a new one
0:21
Keep it until the warranty is about to expire or has expired and then dump it
0:27
And the reason they say that is because they say that the VATTS. vehicles are unreliable and the maintenance you're going to have to do on it afterwards is going
0:35
to far exceed the price of the vehicle and you're just not going to want to keep the car
0:40
Well, I saw those comments and I strongly disagree and that's why I'm going to make this video
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on why if you're interested in a BMW, you should be looking for a used BMW instead of a new
0:53
one. And I'm going to give you a few reasons on why I believe that. So let me first strike down
0:58
the misconception that BMWs are unreliable. It's simply not true. It's kind of funny, though
1:05
I'm sitting in front of my mom's Z4 instead of sitting in front of the BMW E36 that we have left
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That one's kind of in the middle of a restoration, and I didn't think it'd be a good idea to be
1:18
discussing why you should be getting a used BMW in front of a BMW that's looking like
1:24
absolute garbage right now. So that's why I'm in front of the nice Z4
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But anyways, we've owned a number of different BMWs over the years, and we've all purchased them used when we first bought them
1:37
Whether it was an X5, this Z4, several E36s, an E46 and E46 and E90, we've owned a bunch of different kinds
1:46
And besides the X5, which you're never going to hear me say that an X5 V8 is a good reliable car because it was terrible for us
1:57
Besides that one, the rest of the cars we have owned have been relatively great cars in terms of how expensive it is to maintain
2:05
how expensive it is to just generally repair the cars and buy parts and such
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Now, I will say that BMWs in general, yes, the parts are more expensive
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And yes, the labor is more expensive than if you own to Ford, owned a Honda or Toyota
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but that's literally just the, that's just the nature of the beast
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of owning a German sports car or a performance vehicle You have to expect to pay a little bit more for maintenance than owning a Ford Ranger or a Toyota Camry If you interested in a more in explanation of why I strongly believe that BMWs are relatively reliable vehicles
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I wrote a really in-depth article on that on my website, and the link to it is going to be at the top and a card right above here
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So another reason is if you're interested in getting used BMW, you have literally tons of options
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to look through. You know, if you want an E90, an E46, an E36, a box style E30, those are some cool
3:07
cars. You've got all these different options and you have all these different price discrepancies
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And so BMW has made a lot of really cool cars over the years. And if you're literally just looking
3:19
at the newest, what is it now, G20 or F30? Let's see the G20 or F30. I get mixed up between
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the two. If you're only looking at the newest thing they got, and that's all the options
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options you have is that body style of car and that that type of vehicle
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But BMW has made a lot of cool cars over the years. You know, I do a lot of E36 stuff here
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There's dolphin-shaped vehicles. They're gorgeous cars, but they've made a lot of other cool cars
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The E90, I really like. The E90s are really pretty cars as well
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The E90 M3 is really highly rated. Those are cool cars. So you just have a lot of different options to purchase if you're interested in
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going used. Another thing is, I was talking about reliability earlier, and I was talking about how
4:05
maintenance is a little bit higher on BMWs than a lot of other vehicles. Actually, you know
4:11
depending on the BMW, it can be a good bid higher than what on, than another car you might buy
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But the really cool thing is, if you are just a little bit interested in doing your own work
4:23
or, you know, you work, you work on your own cars already, you like doing some DIY stuff, you can save a
4:29
boat load of money on maintenance by doing it yourself. You know, stuff like doing your own oil
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changes, doing your own brake jobs, doing changing spark plugs, changing air filters, you know
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relatively basic stuff like that. Extremely easy to learn and you'll save a boatload of money
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if you do that kind of maintenance on your vehicle yourself. Now a lot of people might not want
4:51
to do that and that's okay. But I'm just suggesting another way to save additional money by buying
4:57
a used BMW instead of new. So I've told you a few reasons why I think you should buy used
5:03
But like why do I not want people to buy new BMWs Like why do I not say you know new BMWs if you got the cash go ahead Well there two really big reasons why I usually tell people not to buy new BMWs
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The first one is, even if you got the dough to make the cash payments every month or, hey, you know, if you got the dough to buy it out outright, you know, good for you
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But, you know, even if you got the dough to make the monthly payments, once those monthly payments are done, or once you want to get rid of that car, you own
5:34
a car that is a really fast depreciating asset. And as much as I like BMWs, one of the worst
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thing, absolute worst things about these cars, especially for somebody buying new, is that they
5:47
are one of the fastest depreciating vehicles on the road right now. It doesn't matter what BMW
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buy, they typically depreciate much faster than any other type of vehicle you could, any other
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type of vehicle you can look for. So that's a huge, that's a huge disadvantage
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to buying new and that's something that anybody that the person buying that car new is going
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to take on wholly by themselves because the next guy who buys it used is going to take advantage
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of that by buying a car way cheaper in what it would otherwise be and that's because depreciation
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hits BMWs really hard. The second reason I say to stay away from new BMWs is because, you know
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I think they're offering a $50,000 warranty right now. now on repairs and stuff and on work, or four years, I think, whichever one ends soonest
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Well, most people, if you're using that as a daily driver, you're going to put 50,000 miles
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on the car within four years. It's pretty easy to do that
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I used to commute between Burlington and Wilmington and North Carolina. It's about three-hour drive, and I used to do that every two weeks
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I probably put about 20,000,000 miles on my BMW in one year
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So the fact that they're throwing out a 50,000 mile warranty, it's just it'll go a whole lot quicker than you think
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Because when they're throwing it out at the dealership as a gimmick, you're thinking, wow, I got this great warranty
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But, you know, it goes away quick. And then suddenly you're having to do repairs on these vehicles that you didn't expect to have to do
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And these newer BMWs, a lot of them have so many different types of technological gizmos and such
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and bells and whistles that they tend to start breaking after you surpass the 50 mark So you gonna be footing that bill yourself if you buy new new BMW So what do I recommend if you are interested in buying a used BMW Well I strongly recommend
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that if you're in the market for used BMW, that you try and steer away from higher mileage
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cars. You know, my typical rule is stay below 150K, but really I'd strongly recommend that you go
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even lower than that. Stay around 100 or less. less than that if you can find some good examples for well less than 100 that aren't going
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to break the bank, then try and find cars like that. And here's the reason why I say that
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BMWs, the maintenance isn't terrible and the cost isn't terrible on these vehicles unless you don't
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take care of them. If you don't fly the proper maintenance, if you're not taking care of these
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vehicles, then you're going to have major repairs as these cars get into the later life. And that's
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what really kills these cars is when you don't maintain them, you don't take care of them right
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and then by 100, 120,000 miles, maybe a little more, they're at the junkyard and I'm picking parts off of them
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And it's literally just because people don't take care of them, and then you have a major issue of her
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So I recommend that you stay away from higher mileage vehicles, and the only reason that I recommend that is because it's much harder to track
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how well the previous owner has been taking care of the car when they're higher mileage vehicles
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You know, sometimes they've been owned by two or three different owners, and it's really impossible to make sure that these cars have been getting the tender-loving care that they deserve
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So to recap, I strongly suggest you're in the market for a BMW
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Go with a used one with a good clean record, round or less than 100,000 miles, and you won't be sorry
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BMWs just aren't the way to go. Now I'm going to make a video pretty soon on what I would recommend if you really want a new BMW because there are some benefits to buying a car new
9:47
Well, like with any other car. You know, you're buying with zero issues. You got the warranty period. So there are some benefits. But if you're going to go that route, I would strongly suggest that you just lease it. Leasing, you get all the, you get none of the headaches of owning the vehicle, but you get to enjoy it for, for it
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few years and then you get to get something else. So if you've got to get a new one, lease it instead
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but I strongly suggest that you get it used. If you like this video, please smash the like
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button and subscribe. Y'all have a go one
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