2010 BMW 320d Lifestyle review - Drive

I've never had to buy a car in a short space of time to suit a unique purpose before until i bought my 2010 BMW 320d Lifestyle with M Sport Innovations package. The situation was I was working in a BMW dealership and had been driving brand new BMW's everyday as company cars. Some weeks I would have the same car, other weeks i would have up to 4 different cars. One day I could be in a new X5 the next a 340i. While it seemed like such an amazing life working almost 6 days a week with 2 young kids at home I wanted a better home life. If i was going to do this i needed to make some changes and sacrifices. I found the new job. No company car, 5 days a week, 2 weeks off at xmas, and 9-5. I needed a car. I live to far for public transport for it to be viable for the change I'm making to get back my life. I love cars too much to give that up too. Quickly i hit the used car list at out dealership and found this gem. It was a one owner 2010 BMW 320d Lifestyle M Sport Innovations in Space Gray. At the time when the car was new this was copy, paste and repeat. The most popular spec. It had full service history with the dealer i worked with, 125,000km and a lady owner who traded it to upgrade to a X5. I never saw it when i bought it i just told my manager to roadworthy the car and ill sort payment out. 2 days later I picked it up and was pleasantly surprised by what I got into. The familiar iDrive was the first item to get acquainted and hook up the bluetooth. To my surprise in this version (iDrive2) there was no bluetooth audio streaming which disappointed me a bit as I had gotten used to this in the new cars with iDrive 5 and 6. However i knew that this had a multimedia plug available to which i can plug my iphone into and still use the functionality of iDrive. Again pleasantly surprised to have Navigation which had been updated by the previous owner (thankfully!). One thing that has always confused me about this era of BMW's was that i had remote locking, no key and push button start but i still have to push the key fob into the slot to allow the push button to start. Again not a huge issue but was surprised considering all new BMW's are keyless start and the technology was available to them then. I've started my new, hasty purchase and there was no issues. I left the dealership on my way and settled into my new life. The drive was good. I gave it a little push here and there and found the 135kw 2lt Diesel to have a surprising amount of poke given the age and km of the car. This got me a bit excited and when i got home i needed to find out more. I looked up the torque and was surprised to find it has 380nm. A quick search of Redbook tells me a Brand new Mercedes Benz C220 d with a 2.1L turbo diesel has 125kw and 400Nm. My car had more power, almost as much torque and with a slightly smaller engine 8 years ago!. I was impressed. Since I've had the car I've learned alot about servicing an older BMW. Heres what I learnt. The BMW dealership closest to me is $50 cheaper than the "independent BMW servicing" Which claimed to be cheaper than the dealers. I made a decision that I am probably going to keep this car for sometime and made a decision that I would do my own servicing for the majority of my cars work. I invested $35 in a Haynes online service manual. I did my research on the oil my car currently had, whats available on the market and what the cost would be. Again to my surprise buying 6 litres of the genuine BMW longlife 04 was $15 cheaper and was available. I rang 3 Autobarns, 4 Supercheaps and 2 Bursens to find only 4 litres total of the equivalent oil manufacturer rated as longlife 04. Why was this so important to me? Because some might be surprised to know that even back in 2010 the service intervals were 26000km between oil changes. I also bought the Oil filter genuine from BMW, $10 cheaper than non genuine from the 3 big retaillers. Now before you say "but Tony you used to work at BMW and would have got mates rates from someone you know!" I still shopped it because the dealership l left changed owners and 90% of the staff left. I found another BMW dealer closer to home that was able to assist. What I also found was how surprisingly easy it is to service. I have serviced a few cars in my time and this was by far the easiest car I have ever serviced. I was quoted $440 for oil change, filter change, vehicle inspection and reseting the service reminders. I did this all myself for a grand total of $184.65 and 2 hours time (70% of this time was trying to raise the car because the BMW's are notoriously low as standard. When it came time to doing my rear brakes i went through my whole process. This time i found the dealer in parts alone to be $400 more than what I could source elsewhere with OEM parts not branded BMW. I did rear discs, pads and sensors on my own for $385 grand total which also included the hire of a hoist ( Self Service Automotive in Dandnenong Vic for those interested in working on your own car and want to hire a hoist for an hour or 2) Very different from the $650 i was quoted by various places. Servicing the car myself has not hampered the way it drives. In fact one interesting thing i noted that after the oil change my average fuel economy decreased by 1litre per 100km. I now average 6.9L/100km in heavy traffic most days and i dont worry about trying to conserve fuel. I am really impressed with this. I do notice on the odd Occassion i do a highway drive I average about 4.5L/100km. For a car that now has 141000km to be achieving these numbers I am extremely impressed. The handling is typical BMW, solid, dependable, point and shoot steering and very readable. Even with stability control turned off the car is predictable and well balanced. Being a 3 series it has BMW's hallmark 50/50 weight distribution. My only negatives that I could say is that interior space is a little limited in the rear seats and no heated seats. I can live without these. In finishing up I think this was the best impulse, necessity purchase I have ever made. It certainly made the transition from new BMW's to having to own my own much easier than if i had of bought a vanilla dependable corolla or camry. I think i have a few more years left with this car and I definitely look back at it after i park it everyday still think how modern it looks and how good it looks for an 8 year old car.