Faults:

Not much while I have had it; looking through the history, there are bills exceeding over £1500 for some repairs. This is an expensive car to fix. It has full history - do not touch these cars unless they are cared for and the seller can prove that.

Cosmetically a little rough, but I will deal that in due time. I plan to keep it as a second car so I do not 100% rely on it; any problems I will deal with and I have a BMW independent specialist at hand to help out. I wouldn't recommend taking a car of this age to a main dealer.

General Comments:

520i - the most basic 5 series with manual transmission and cloth seats. The car still feels like luxury however, smooth ride, nice to drive, excellent amount of standard equipment (for its time), I just love it.

Planned to use it a lot more when bought in early 2020, but as you all know what happened next. Been essentially garaged and used very lightly by myself for the last 2 years, plan to get it out the rest of this summer and cruise in style with it - this is my favorite 5 series (E39) for styling, looks very sharp in black and original alloy wheels.

3000 miles I have put on it so far, so can tell you this - the 2.0 engine is not as slow as people make it out to be, but the bigger engines are definitely better. This can do between 27 - 32 mpg cruising, much less with city driving, not great nowadays but acceptable in 1999. Gear change is smooth and the clutch feels nicely weighted; the car handles very well, and does not feel its age at all. Very comfortable interior with good visibility.

Overall I just love it and I am glad I finally got round to getting one - I was only a teenager when these were new in the 1990's, and always liked executive cars from that time.

Faults:

Water pump failed, resulting in failure of power steering and terminal engine heat damage.

Reverse parking sensors had lost their beep and only clicked!!

General Comments:

What a lovely car this was, and what a shame it met an early end!!

Bought off a chap who'd done mainly motorway miles in it the last 7 or 8 years, and fastidiously maintained as his company paid for maintenance; he was only getting rid of it because he'd been told by his boss he had to run a newer car!

Firstly, I was AMAZED at how well this thing drove for something with so many miles on the clock. It shows how well BMW's are built, that this had less squeaks and rattles than my wife's 18 month old Hyundai i40 company car!

We did several long journeys in it while I had it, simply because it was by far the most comfortable, refined car in the household. It was only bought to stick the dog in the back, so our newer cars didn't get messed up!!

Mine had grey leather (a bit worn), but oddly no heated seats or electric adjustment. The climate control worked brilliantly in hot weather, the stereo sounded great, all the electrics worked, it was spot on! It even had self levelling air suspension at the back!

To drive I found the engine silky smooth, although it had to be revved quite hard to get the best performance out of it, and handling wise was slightly barge like, but very accurate steering, and although it was a bit wallowy when cornering, if you really pushed it seemed to firm up and just go round, I never felt like it was going to lose grip. Got anything from 25 to 33 MPG in it, which I thought was alright for a big, heavy, petrol.

One odd thing that did happen, was on a very, very steep mountain road in North Wales, where I had to stop to give way to a Land Rover coming the other way, and the Beemer just wouldn't move again! No matter how many revs I gave it, it just sat there, until I was scared I was going to burn the clutch out. The handbrake didn't hold it either. It gives you an idea how steep the road was though, that when I rolled the car back to turn round and applied the brakes, it actually just kept going, skidding down the road!

Oh, and in common with other manual BMWs I've driven, the clutch was really uncomfortably heavy and jerky to operate.

It came with good branded tyres all round, and a set of winter tyres. So... you can imagine how gutted I was when the water pump failed, the engine temp shot up, and I drove it to my local garage to be told the engine had "probably" suffered terminal heat damage, and the only way to tell for sure was to put a £350 water pump on it. On balance, I wasn't about to spend £350 on a car I'd bought for £1000 as a run around, to find it was still knackered.

So, scrapyard in the sky for the Beemer. Real shame, I really liked it!!