Following on from my previous post Final Update on My 430d, after waving goodbye to my 4 Series I welcomed my new car, a BMW 330d X-Drive M-Sport. With the miles piling on the 4 Series I needed to change it to something with fewer miles so when this example came up with just 16000 miles on the clock I had to move quickly.

The car is a late 2015 LCi model so a year older than my 4 series was but it was clearly far less used by its one previous owner. The car is another BMW Individual colour called Citrine Black, a pearlescent black with an orange toned multicolour fleck which appears in bright sunshine. The car came with a very high specification with the M-Sport Plus package giving the diamond cut 19 inch 442m wheels, 370mm M-Sport brakes, Pro Navigation with the bigger screen and Harmon Kardon hifi. It is guided by LED Headlights and comes with many features both as standard and with options such as folding mirrors and split folding rear seats with centre armrest. The options totalled nearly £7000 when the car was new.

The interior has Black Dakota Leather seats and the brushed aluminium dashboard trim. I definitely miss the gorgeous Merino Leather from the 4 Series but the Dakota should be harder wearing and easier to keep clean.

Unlike the 4 Series I had, the 3 was an X-Drive model. Whilst I wasn’t looking for a 4 wheel drive car I figured it would make it more useable during any bad winter weather although I was a little concerned as to the effect the non M-Sport suspension that comes with X-Drive models would have on the way the car drives and also how it looks I decided it wasn’t a problem. The car sits 20mm higher than the Rear Wheel Drive cars and has less sporty springs and dampers and I have never liked the look of the X-Drive cars but being a black car it does seem to make the arch gap less obvious than in other shades of colour. I will make another post soon about how the car compares from a driving point of view as I have now covered 7000 miles since taking ownership of the car.

The engine is the same 3 litre straight six single turbo N57 diesel with around 260hp and 550nm of torque that I had thoroughly enjoyed in my 4 Series. Importantly, and a must for me when I was looking for a car, the 330d was a BMW Manufacturer Approved used car so came with a years BMW Warranty included on the car with roadside assistance and will therefore give me the option to extended to the BMW Insured warranty after the first year which served me so well on my 4 Series. Theoretically the car should also have been of the highest standard but unfortunately my initial experiences with the dealer were not as they should have been.

I had queried with the dealer prior to collection as to the age of the tyres with the car being 7.5 years old and the BMW recommendation being to change them at 6 regardless of wear but on collecting the car it still wore 3 of its original tyres which were now 8 years old. I complained whilst I was there and in the end was rudely spoken to by one of the management and told they would not be doing anything about it as the tyres were legal. With a 3 hour journey back home still to cover I decided I would take it up with BMW UK afterwards and get going as I didn’t think such an omission was what should be expected of an Approved BMW. I was also concerned as one rear tyre had been changed and I was under the impression that tyres should be changed in pairs on an X-Drive vehicle otherwise damage to the 4 wheel drive system can occur. On the drive home it quickly became apparent that the wheel alignment was considerably out as well with the steering wheel set to the left driving in a straight line.

I contacted BMW UK on my journey home thanks to lots of traffic making it a very long first journey in the car, who were initially very helpful. The confirmed that the rear tyres should have been replaced as a pair and apologised for my experience with the dealership and they said they would speak to the dealership directly and come back to me. A few days later I chased them up and was told that the dealer had shown them the Approved Used Car checklist and that the tyres were considered to be fine and that they have to take the dealerships advice on the matter and could not help any further despite me refuting the fact that if they just take the garages side without looking into whether they are actually meeting their obligations. If the manufacturer doesn’t keep tabs on the behaviour of their outlets then who does? I was told that they are independent of BMW themselves and therefore could not go any further with my complaint despite me pointing out their dealerships are the face of their brand for customers whether they are owned by BMW or not.

I was furious and armed with the vehicles manual showing the requirement to change tyres at 6 years old in black and white I set about pulling them apart on social media. Thankfully my BMW following on Instagram, Facebook and then Twitter, I was quickly contacted by the group that owned the dealership and then by BMW UK and then received a phonecall from the head of business at the dealership. Finally, after being spoken to in an extremely rude and patronising manor by several members of the management there, I received an apology for my experiences there and they decided to fund the replacement of the remaining three old tyres on the car. I also quickly received a copy of the paperwork for the sale which I had been requesting for several weeks by this point and was promised many times would be emailed to me. I was told he would look into the wheel alignment issue as well. He acknowledged that the owners manual contradicts their standards for approve used cars when it comes to tyres and that I had not received the service I should have done. The car was booked into my local dealership who were fantastic at liaising with the offending dealer on the issue for me and they replaced the tyres with the Bridgestone S001 Star Marked runflats so I had a matching set of tyres of the same tread depth. I paid for the wheel alignment to be done as I was getting nowhere with that and had them look at the front headlights as I had a leveling control failure warning pop up a few times. Unfortunately, that became an issue because it turned out the lights had been replaced prior to my ownership and no coded to the car and they could see several brand new components on the front of the car which showed it had likely had a front end impact so the warranty would not cover it. Thankfully the offending dealership paid for this also and my local dealership confirmed all other repairs had been done correctly.

I had been driving the car for 3 or 4 weeks at this point and this was the first time the car was as it should have been when I collected it and felt I could finally start to enjoy getting the know the car. Being holiday season, I covered 4000 miles in the first two months with the car and was determined not to let the buying experience ruin my relationship with it. Stay tuned for how those 4000 miles went and my ownership experience to date has been since then in my next post here.