[The OL OG]

Hi Friends, first time posting and I appreciate the community here.

I am about to buyout my lease and need some advice on navigating the process to get it CPO'd and warrantied. Since I'll own it I want to make sure I don't get stuck with a surprise expensive repair. Continuing the included maintenance would be cool too.

I understand there is a cost to the CPO and then there are a variety of BMW extended warranties I can buy. Can anyone walk me through the best course of action here?

The car is in great shape. I have some scuffs on the wheels from some curbs and will need new tires which I expect to have to address either myself or pay them to do.

The car is a 2018 340i ZHP manual that I love. it's a bit of a unicorn and I can talk all day about the joy that the ZHP package adds. This was the swan song of the manual transmission and the build shows that it's a driver's car. There's not a ton of info out there about it. Photos attached.

Thanks for all advice!
Mike

[tturedraider]

To CPO the car the dealer would have to take ownership of the car and then sell it back to you. In the last couple of years BMWFS has implemented some pretty strict rules that pretty much eliminate that possibility. BMWFS wants you to buyout the lease directly from them. In this market you’ll pay the full contracted residual and that will probably still end up being a pretty good bargain.

Your best bet if you want a BMW backed warranty is to buy one of their extended warranties. There was a period of time when BMW was requiring the dealer selling the warranty to physically inspect the car, which pretty much limited you to local dealers. I’m pretty sure that requirement is on longer in effect. You should be able to shop for a warranty at any authorized BMW dealer in the country. There are a handful of dealers that are known to offer lower prices on the warranties they sell. Unfortunately, right this minute I can’t recall who any of them are, but if you do some searching you should be able to find some names.

[The OL OG]

Thanks for the help! Now I am just trying to figure out if there is any value to doing a CPO and warranty, or if only the warranty is needed.

The answer to this question was to contact Christine with some fantastic warranty rates as suggested by tturedraider above. See this post:
https://f30.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh....php?t=1670964

[tturedraider]

So glad to see you found that great source for a warranty!!

[capt_slow]

See my post

Here for buying out the lease as a CPO

and

Here for extended warranties


To come out ahead on extended warranties, you need to be vigilant on the stuff that is wrong with your car and know what are the limits of coverage of your warranty. During my 1 year CPO warranty, I had:

My valve cover and intake replaced
My coolant expansion tank replaced
My steering rack replaced

None of the above faults had symptoms to the casual eye, nor did they impair the driveability of the car, but they were covered in the fine print of the warranty. This was over $5K in dealer repairs for a warranty that costs me $1600. The way I see it is this is preventative maintenance that lets me keep the car long term. In essence, I wont have to worry about my steering rack failing, my valve cover gasket leaking, or my coolant tank failing anytime soon. You can bet that I'll be keeping an eye on stuff so I can make the most of the $3900 CPO warranty extension I bought.

[The OL OG]

Thank you @capt_slow those were helpful reads. Since my 2018 340 only has 20k miles on it and is under 3 years old the BMW extended warranty of 7 years/100k mi warranty is very reasonable. I've also learned that it is transferable in a private party sale or I get a pro rata refund if I trade it in to a dealer. This is huge because it will absolutely help the resale value and I plan to put it on BaT when I'm ready to sell since it's a special spec.

From what I can find the only advantage to going through the certification process to CPO it is that the first year of the CPO is unlimited miles. Since I don't drive much, the CPO is an unnecessary step. I'm just buying the BMW platinum warranty and calling it good.

For others who find this searching for their own answers, I wouldn't take my conclusion as gospel since my research wasn't exhaustive but I think I've come to the correct conclusion, at least for my situation.

[capt_slow]

Going the CPO path also unlocks some good interest rates and incentives that may outweigh the benefits of going with a credit union. As of writing they are:

• 0.9% APR for 36 months
• $500 loyalty credit

You'll need to do the math and compare the long-term costs between going with an outside bank and BMWFS CPO. In my case, the higher interest rate of my credit union made it a wash with BMWFS. If you're paying cash to buy it out, then I recommend financing via BMWFS to capitalize on the $500 loyalty credit and pay off the loan in 2-3 months.

[The OL OG]

Great point. Do you know if I have to actually certify the leased car to get those perks, or can I just use BMWFS to finance the lease buyout and get those perks? It looks like a minimum of $1,500 to make the vehicle a CPO here.

[capt_slow]

Originally Posted by The OL OG

Great point. Do you know if I have to actually certify the leased car to get those perks, or can I just use BMWFS to finance the lease buyout and get those perks? It looks like a minimum of $1,500 to make the vehicle a CPO here.

Your car needs to meet this BMW CPO checklist in order to qualify. Most dealers charge around $1500 for the labor, inspection, and paperwork to CPO a car. This doenst include any reconditioning. So if the dealer finds your brakes and tires are out of CPO spec, then they will charge you the associated cost for new brakes and tire. If a certain criteria is borderline, the dealer may look the other way.


In my case, my car needed zero reconditioning. The only exception was one tire was 0.5mm out of spec, which the dealer allowed. In the end, my $1600 CPO cost was a wash with the higher 2.74-2.99% APR from my credit union. Going the CPO route actually costed me an extra $135 over the 4 year life of the loan compared to a credit union. I went with BMWFS for the simplicity of having the dealer do all the DMV paperwork and the one year warranty extension. If you do go through the CPO route, I recommend you do a dry run of the checklist yourself and see what needs reconditioning, then address it yourself for cheaper.

[The OL OG]

Originally Posted by capt_slow

Your car needs to meet this BMW CPO checklist in order to qualify. Most dealers charge around $1500 for the labor, inspection, and paperwork to CPO a car. This doenst include any reconditioning. So if the dealer finds your brakes and tires are out of CPO spec, then they will charge you the associated cost for new brakes and tire. If a certain criteria is borderline, the dealer may look the other way.


In my case, my car needed zero reconditioning. The only exception was one tire was 0.5mm out of spec, which the dealer allowed. In the end, my $1600 CPO cost was a wash with the higher 2.74-2.99% APR from my credit union. Going the CPO route actually costed me an extra $135 over the 4 year life of the loan compared to a credit union. I went with BMWFS for the simplicity of having the dealer do all the DMV paperwork and the one year warranty extension. If you do go through the CPO route, I recommend you do a dry run of the checklist yourself and see what needs reconditioning, then address it yourself for cheaper.

Great info, thanks! I'm currently on snow tires for the winter here and only have two summer tires left so I know I'll be getting new ones either way so those will be fine. The wheels have some curb rash on them and that is the thing most likely to come up but I'd like to fix it anyway. Sounds like it's at least worth looking into.