[paranoya]

So long story short. I’ve never owned a BMW before, though I’ve always had an admiration for these vehicles. I’m currently thinking to buy myself a F30 daily driver. I’ve been looking into the 320 diesels. And I’m pretty much set for that if nobody changes my mind. I’m going to go look at a few cars next week. Could anyone show me in the right direction at what I should look at, what would be the “most reliable” engine and so on. Btw I’m looking for an automatic and I’ve read that they are pretty nice and durable. Daily I would drive to work and back about 80km. And 4 to 5 longer trips per year. And I’m not planning on selling it anytime soon. All advice is welcome 😁

[Cytoplasm0671]

Originally Posted by paranoya

So long story short. I’ve never owned a BMW before, though I’ve always had an admiration for these vehicles. I’m currently thinking to buy myself a F30 daily driver. I’ve been looking into the 320 diesels. And I’m pretty much set for that if nobody changes my mind. I’m going to go look at a few cars next week. Could anyone show me in the right direction at what I should look at, what would be the “most reliable” engine and so on. Btw I’m looking for an automatic and I’ve read that they are pretty nice and durable. Daily I would drive to work and back about 80km. And 4 to 5 longer trips per year. And I’m not planning on selling it anytime soon. All advice is welcome 😁

These all seem like very reasonable requests. I don't know about the 320 diesel, but it seems like most engine's are reliable as long as you maintain it well. I am not super experienced with historic BMWs, but as far as I know pretty much any F30 is reliable with proper maintanence. For example, getting oil changes regularly and using only BMW approved oil.

Personally, I highly recommend the B58 engine like what is in the 340i as it is very powerful and very reliable from what I've seen. So for regular oil changes make sure to get oil with the LL01 BMW spec. I use Pennzoil Platinum Euro 5w40 LL01 as I tune my engine and the oil is excellent for tuned engines.

[StradaRedlands]

Originally Posted by paranoya

So long story short. I’ve never owned a BMW before, though I’ve always had an admiration for these vehicles. I’m currently thinking to buy myself a F30 daily driver. I’ve been looking into the 320 diesels. And I’m pretty much set for that if nobody changes my mind. I’m going to go look at a few cars next week. Could anyone show me in the right direction at what I should look at, what would be the “most reliable” engine and so on. Btw I’m looking for an automatic and I’ve read that they are pretty nice and durable. Daily I would drive to work and back about 80km. And 4 to 5 longer trips per year. And I’m not planning on selling it anytime soon. All advice is welcome 😁

I don't have a diesel, but from what I've read here, anecdotally, diesels will end up costing you in maintenance what you save in fuel costs. Here in The States there is the added difficulty of finding someone competent to work on them. Not trying to talk you out of the diesel, but look at the 320i or 330i gassers and determine what the purchase and fuel costs will be comparable to the 320d diesel when you add in maintenance.

Also, while your daily commute is substantial, does it involve a lot of stop and start traffic, or is it open road? Again anecdotally, diesels excel at open road/constant speed driving, but stop/start and short trips lead to potential maintenance problems.

If the 320d has the ZF8 transmission, then yes, it is a good one. Possibly the best.

[Zheez]

It does definitely depend on your driving. 80km a day is perhaps still worth considering a petrol over a diesel.

For me, just about every trip I do in my car is 100+ miles so diesel does pay off. I've done about 200k miles across the 3 BMW diesels I've owned (120k in an E90 with N47, 60k in an F30 also with N47 and so far only about 20k in my current F30 also with N47) and I've never had any engine related issues whatsoever.

Some of that is possibly down to luck but I suspect it's mostly because I only ever do long drives. Of course it helps that our N47 engined 320d here doesn't have the DEF system that the USA 328d has, which does seem to kick up issues from time to time.