BMW 650i Yes or No? Pros and Cons?

[TurboLlew]

I think in general this forum is pretty reasonable on the cars. But yeah, we do get a bit caught up in "BMW"ness... The truth is a lot of the higher performance engines from BMW of the last 20yrs have had a variety of issues (6cyl, v8 and v10 bearings, vanos, solenoids), N54 wastegate issues and cooling issues, and on and on and on.

The reality is that we are to some extent blinded, so we need to keep that in mind. I don't feel like I got an S54 car and was duped by the BMW forum, the opposite really, there was a lot of openness and relative clarity about the costs of ownership. Thankfully!

I read it again and think I didn't quite come across as intended LOL. I didn't mean it in the sense that the majority of people don't give good advice... far from it actually! However, there are enough people that feel they have to post something 'redeeming' in defense of their platform or out of politeness and this can skew the discussion towards the OP perhaps thinking there were two views that are equally likely or that things were not as bad as they perhaps thought. 

Much like debates on TV. There might be a panel with 4 people, 2 of them representing one view and 2 representing the opposing view... The perception is that there is a 50/50 likelihood both are correct or even that there is 50/50 support for each side... however depending on the topic you might find that 50% of the people represent a view that only has 2% of support in reality yet they enjoy 50% of the airtime. This has been exploited to great effect by the media and even during these COVID times.

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Any redeeming qualities the N63 might have in the 20% of the time it is properly working is negated by the fact that you can buy an S63Tu based car for the same amount of money you would pay for an N63 car and doing the preventative work on it (which will not stop the inevitable anyway). The only people who will tell you the N63 is not garbage are those that own them and are suffering from Stockholm syndrome. It is not any more expensive (it is probably cheaper in fact) to own an M5 or M6 vs. an x50.

This forum is full of people who have bought either junk OR a sub-M model OR a car that was quickly surpassed by a revision but will tell you things like 'oh but it sounds better' (this is the N63 owner's go-to) or that it 'drives better' or or for other cars 'it is a baby M2/M3/M5/M6' GTFO.

There is an N63 for sale which some tuner managed to convince a guy to invest in heavily: Forged motor, upgraded intercooler, turbos, suspension etc etc. Apparently this car makes 400 wheel (so maybe 10kw more than a bone stock first run M5) and it apparently had to be detuned to 340kw (no doubt because this 'freshly built' car was still full of issues).

We must stop being polite about how bad some of these cars are I think and even where cars are fine (eg: if you have one, it is not worth upgrading yet) telling potential new owners that 'the old one was better'. I am very aware that there are cars this does apply to... but N63 based cars are not among them.

Amen brother Amen.

It's a complete piece of shit and i wish people would stop talking so much kak. the TU version of this engine still had so many US mandated recalls and revisions you would think they did nothing on it.

In the case of the N63, there are actually proper design flaws that make owning one a VERY bad idea even by BMW standards!! You can make excuses for the noise of the V10 or the issues with the early turbo cars or required preventative work on so many M motors to some degree but the N63 is next level BAD

 

[TBP88]

haha, not a criticism! Just saying that I think we do get blinded, we are here precisely because we do like BMW, and the reality is that anyone coming here for advise should keep in mind the fact that most of us are biased towards BMWs.

There's a reason we bought them!