Scoot’s thoughts on all things technology, design, photography and life in general !
Had a new 5 series for a couple of days on an extended test drive as I think about what car to get when mine is up for replacement later this year. The nice team at alphabet arranged for Berry in Heathrow to supply a test drive car of the new F10 5 Series. The car was delivered on Monday afternoon and collected this afternoon.
The car was a 530d SE Saloon with the following specifications:
- Black Sapphire Metallic paint
- Black Dakota Leather interior
- Dynamic Pack
- Sports Front Seats
- High gloss shadowline
- Sports Steering Wheel
- Anthracite headlining
- 19″ W Light Alloys style 332
- Media Pack – Professional
- 10.2″ widescreen sat nav
- BMW assist, portal & telematics
- Hard drive
- Heated Front Seats
- Fine Brushed Aluminium trim
- Automatic Gearbox
The interior was very comfortable and the sports seats are better than the ones on the E60 Touring I have at the moment. I would prefer a slightly smaller and chunkier sports steering wheel, but the one fitted was comfortable and worked well with the cars new all electric steering system. The central tunnel is much higher than that of the E60 touring and therefore gives the impression of a smaller more enclosed cockpit. The rear seats had plenty of legroom, but given that most passengers in the back are likely to be no older than 3 in the short term this is not a big issue. The boot is massive, but not a big as the new E Class Merc, but plenty big enough for most trips.
Now for driving the engine is a peach, in comparison to my current 3.0 diesel this one responds immediately so no gearbox or turbo lag and is very free revving all the way to the red line. But for me the highlight of this car is the eight speed automatic gearbox, it is fantastic piece of engineering and drives beautifully. You don’t notice the changes and when you want to push on it just gets on with it without fuss or hassle. I reset the fuel consumption meter when I got the car (it was reading average of 36mpg) and managed a respectable 33mpg over a very short amount of driving mainly on twisty roads or in rush hour traffic, plus I did take advantage of the sport mode a few times. This is going to be a massive improvement over the 27.1mpg I have averaged over the last 20months with my current car.
The handling of the car was good, but was slightly upset by the 19″ wheels on run flats, I expect I would go for 18″ wheels instead as a better compromise of looks versus handling. On twisty roads it changed direction without fuss, but did get a little unsettled on those fat boys. The ride is softer than the E60, but that is also due to the E60 being an M Sport variant.
So as a car I want one, it ticks all the boxes for me. The only thing that I would change is I would be more inclined for the M Sport version that is due later in the year, but currently it is not available so would not fit with my timescales and is going to be at least a couple of grand more expensive. I got to see the new 535d M Sport Touring at the PGA on Sunday and it looks fab in carbon black, but I think the SE version looks good and BMW have done a better job of the SE look in comparison to the E60 SE saloon.
The other person to give the F10 the thumbs up was LCJ as you can see below…
So the nice man from Autoglass appeared about a week ago and spent 2hours fiddling with the broken sunroof. This was after saying this should be a quick job as it only 6 bolts to undo 
Finally he appeared stating Houston we have a problem, OK he didn’t use that exact phrase. It turned out that with all the will in the world the sunroof would not close as the anti jamming mechanism kept cutting in due to hidden debris. It turns out that glass cover only goes as far as replacing and hoovering up broken glass that can be got to. So as my sunroof cover was closed when it exploded most of the shattered glass ended up in the roof headlining and there some in the rails that the roof slides along. I spoke to the insurance company and they stated I have two choices the first would be initiate a full accident claim and hence stuff up my protected NCB or take to the dealer and get them to fix it.
So I decided the dealer as with excess and potential additional cost due to loss of NCB at next renewal would be greater than the costs overall. Next issue was getting it booked into the garage which meant that it only went in yesterday for evaluation. The garage rang and said that I had two options, first to have the glass taken out of the sunroof and the hoover stuck inside to try and remove all the glass at about 1.5hrs labour or the whole head liner removed and all the glass cleaned out at 5hrs labour. I opted for the expensive one as I was concerned that I would drive down the road and another piece of rogue glass get in the mechanism and the roof being stuck open again 
The car is now due back on Monday as its a long job which they couldn’t finish on Friday.. Oh well looking forward to getting it back especially after hiring a ford focus for a week that was a bit gutless and noisy on the motorway..
On the way back from Heidi & Adrians in sunny Buckinghamshire we were traveling on the M25 between J16 & J15 when there was a loud bang followed by a shattering sound. After the initial shock it became clear that the sunroof has shattered, but how. The bang coincided with us going past a bridge so we can only think that something fell from it or was dropped/thrown on to the car roof. I got off the motorway to check the damage and the front glass had completely shattered
A good around the car and no other damaged could be seen so we are foxed to the real cause of the break. I am glad of two things about this accident, the first was the fact that the internal cover was closed otherwise the three of us could have been showered in glass. The second thing was that it wasn’t raining.
The fun has now started to get it replaced, I am waiting for autoglass to call me tomorrow about getting the actual glass whilst we wait for Privilege to authorise the replacement. Fingers cross that it gets fixed quickly as the car isn’t going anywhere at the moment and thank goodness we have the car port to protect it.
Have been thinking about what to do next autumn when my current car goes back. So with a germany car history over the last six cars and 15 years it will be germany again next time.. So the history goes something like this:
- 86 VW Golf MkII 16v GTi
- 90 VW Golf MkII 16v GTi
- 99 VW Golf MkIV 1.8T GTi
- 02 BMW 320Ci
- 05 BMW 330i M Sport Saloon
- 05 BMW 530d Sport Touring
Current car is fab, it has loads of space, drive pretty well, handles like a treat given its size, but not a patch on 330i in terms of out and out driving fun. Cos it is so practical it makes it difficult to think what to get next. The heart says something a bit different, but the brain is saying we need the space. Not sure this is exactly true and in reality we need the space half a dozen times a year.
Where to start was the next thing so have been thinking a lot about the different options and ideas to throw into the mix in terms of what I should really test. This is been an interesting exercise seesawing between sensible and not so sensible. As you will see from the list below there are some differences in the choices..
- BMW 5 Series M Sport Touring
- BMW 5 Series M Sport Saloon
- BMW 5 Series GT SE
- BMW X1 sDrive
- BMW 3 Series M Sport Saloon
- BMW 3 Series M Sport Touring
- Jaguar XF 3.0D
- Audi A5 Sportback
- Audi A6 S Line Saloon
- Audi A6 S Line Avant
- Audi A4 S Line Saloon
- Audi A4 S Line Avant
- Mercedes C-Class Sport Saloon
- Mercedes C-Class Sport Estate
- Mercedes E-Class Sport Saloon
- Mercedes E-Class Sport Coupe
It seems I have listed most of the german options with a Jag thrown in the middle So the heart is saying at the moment go for a E-Class Coupe, but concerned about the space in the back for the car seat. LCJ will be moving out of his car seat about 6months after my change date so may not be that bad if it fits.
May be I will just stick with what I have (or just get a newer one) but I do like to have a change now and then. The next steps is to start driving some of these over the next couple of months so I can get a better idea, but one thing that has also come up is the potential to pick up a super saloon/estate as an option that would potentially provide the best of both worlds, but will they be too expensive Options on this list are
- BMW M5 Saloon or Touring
- Mercedes C63 AMG Saloon or Touring
- Jaguar XFR (not sure I will ever get one in my price range for a good few years)
Once I have tested some of these cars I will include my thoughts in this blog. It will be interesting to see if they match the reviews comments.
So after a wait I have updated my iPh0ne to v2.2 and at the same time I have also updated the RebelSIM card I am using as a hack. The hack allows me to use my vodafone SIM in the locked on O2 iPhone.
There were issues reported that 3G may not work with the new RebelSIM software, but other wise all should be normal. On first use I saw that I was only getting a 2G data signal so resigned that it was as stated a known issue. When I went into the office I get a 3G signal and thought fab.
The second thing I tried was to pairing with the BMW bluetooth and would you believe it it works, thank you Apple for sorting the 3G bluetooth code with 2.2, fingers crossed that it doesn’t break with 2.2.1 or even 2.3.
Since pairing with the car kit data seems to have disappeared from the phone, I need to spend some more time investigating but I am currently baffled with this one so may try and update 2.2.1 and see if any improvement.
I will keep you posted on this one…
Finished work at a reasonable time on Friday so dug out my Numark Total Control USB mixer and sound card and fired up Traktor Studio and messed around for about an hour mixing some tunes, which was fun especially when I didn’t use any headphones.
The rest of Friday evening was relatively quiet except for Cameron being under the weather but once dinner was out of the way we chilled and watched some TV, plus surfed the net.
Up early Saturday morning with Cameron still being under the weather so decided to do the shopping. Got in the bimmer and started her up but had a battery warning light come on. stopped the car and checked the manual. Tried to restart the car but no joy so had to call BMW ES to come out and sort it out. Battery flat but no reason found to why this had happened, will have to watch this. Did the shopping and grabbed a SB before heading home to see how the little boy was.
He slept most of the morning and early afternoon so I went over to James 3rd Birthday party to help setup and drop off his present. Mark was chief ballon modeler with swords and octopuses being the most requested whilst I was there.
Back home and played with Cameron as he was now getting back to normal temperature and was grazing. Out came the play dough and various toys followed by some food and then to bed.
Once it was all quiet time for Sea Bass fillets, chips and beans.. Yummy and classy all in one
Watch Hancock on DVD which I enjoyed and then off to bed.
Let see what Sunday brings !
So have had my current 530d M Sport Touring for nearly 3months so thought that it would be good to write a review. First lets talk about some details on the car which is 3years old with approx 54K miles on the clock. This is the original 3l diesel engine with an auto gearbox. The car was fitted with the following options when original spec’d:
- Media Pack
- Visibility Pack
- Heated front seats
- Leather
- Auto Gearbox
- Folding mirrors
- Panoramic Sunroof
So top spec and very comfortable on long journeys. I must admit it has been a steep learning curve of owning my first auto, but now that I am use to it when I jump in the other half’s Civic I sometimes forget to depress the clutch, oops.
So I have cover around 4,000 miles and the engine is a peach and the lick down is amazing on the motorway. I must admit that recently most the miles have been in around town, but on Thursday a quick blast to Taunton for a meeting should be fun as long as the weather is not to icy or snowy.
I will take some pics and write an updated review soon.
