I think
@Bazza your post further highlights the point that in reality we can determine the 'value of the motorplan' but simply reducing the 'normal selling price' of a modded car by the value of the lost motorplan is not enough to warrant it being a good deal.
The plan being cancelled is a canary in a mine... You can get by with no plan if you know the history of the car either by personally knowing the owner or having done it yourself (hence my prior comments about it being a totally different scenario to eg: me owning my car for 7 years, knowing what I have done, mods etc and keeping enough money aside for any possible issues.
You have NO IDEA what you are getting yourself into if you're buying a car that has arrived with mods. If anyone has watched Event Horizon, buying a car like this that has just appeared in the trade with no plan and nobody claiming to know what happened to it, then it is like boarding that ship after it just appeared out of nowhere... Those who watched the movie will know what ensues...
The problem is not whether the car was lightly modded or not. You MIGHT get an answer if the owner is upfront.... eg in the other thread but even then he mentioned it was for downpipes then we later see BM3 logs and no idea what map it was on... But I digress....
The more likely scenario is for example the car at Audi where the car is disposed of... there is no history forthcoming and everyone involved washes themselves of the situation (or actively tries to hide the real story). You can no longer get previous owner's info easily with POPI it seems and someone has to 'know the car' AND be willing to share the info. Now you have an issue and R150K later you are still diagnosing... so much for a bargain.
The costs are real for M cars... the costs on a modded one are even higher.... the costs for a modded one with issues can be totally insane. Why put yourself through that pain for a car that is not special in any way, not rare in any way and which is not in short supply by any stretch of the imagination. Prior comments in this thread refer.
This raises another issue in terms of how these mods are done. Logically the tuner should get involved if BMW has washed their hands of the issue... but in this day and age you might not have a tuner! There are those that flash these maps onto the car and think it is going to be fine because they read that it would be fine somewhere. We have this idea that our fuel is 'equivalent' to 91 octane US fuel - LOL in what universe??? It will indeed probably be "fine" for the most part but you will be pulling a ton of timing and be close to the edge of detonation which you will then start to notice as our ambient temps rise... Do you know what you need to run even the 91 octane stage 2 BM3 map on an M5 without pulling a fair bit of timing or running out of injector capacity? Better stock up...
Now you have guys on instagram and facebook talking about making all this power with 'safe daily files' and pump fuel, Meth "just for safety" and all sorts of humble bragging... then you try to flash your own car and are wondering why the "formulas" you read about don't yield the same results with those same mods OR you end up breaking the car in the process because you can't read a log and you don't know that you're running into issues.
I don't post about these things because I generally don't want to get into a war with people who will inevitably take things out of context, screen shot my comments and send it to their expert tuners/mechs or otherwise become upset and hence I am keeping this quite generic. There is alot I will share but not around this. In any case there was little interest in fuel posts, the more technical posts outside of buyers guides or even another fanatic asking about race fuels etc. so I didn't really bother following it up. In any case it appears to be a state secret what is 'really' being run in cars (the map itself, gas, fuel, additives, OBs, meth etc etc) and that is really the point here...
Rinse and repeat for any other brand of car as well. Why do you think AMS Alpha GT-Rs show up for basically the cost of the mods fairly regularly? Brabus Mercs? Novitec Ferraris? You're probably going to spend that money over again on one thing or another. It can bankrupt you (or at least seriously dent your finances). We are talking REPAIR costs in the order of a small rent-producing apartment...
Pay to Play indeed...
So no, unless you really know someone well then either buy the car at a MASSIVE discount (beyond the 'value of the motorplan') or steer clear when no info is available. It just might be the Event Horizon back from the depths of hell, looking good but ready to take you on a ride back to where it came from LOL.
