Free guide · 2005–2010 · N62B48 V8 · 367 PS
BMW 550i E60: what to check before you buy
What this car is, and the six questions that decide whether the one you are looking at is a good buy.
In this guide · 6 chapters
Who built it, and what they built
This is the one nobody photographs.
The E60 5 Series arrived in 2003, and everyone remembers it for the M5 with the V10 — a car with a motorsport engine, a rev counter that read to 8,250, and a reputation for eating its own bearings. That car is a legend and it is not this car.
This is the 550i: the same shell, four doors, a big naturally aspirated V8, and an automatic. No motorsport engine, no drama, no waiting list. Twenty years on it is one of the cheapest ways left into a modern eight-cylinder BMW, and the reason is simply that nobody was ever excited about it.
That is the whole appeal. A 550i does not ask you to be a specialist. It asks you to know two things before you buy one.
The engine
The N62B48: 4,799 cc, 367 PS, naturally aspirated, with Valvetronic — BMW's system where load is controlled by how far the inlet valves open rather than by a butterfly in the intake. There is still a throttle valve; BMW uses it to hold a slight vacuum in the intake. From 2005, when the 4.4-litre 545i was replaced.
The N62 is not a fragile engine. It is a complicated one, and almost everything expensive about it comes from where BMW put things rather than from anything wearing out early. The block, the heads and the bottom end have a good reputation and these engines run to high mileage.
The transmissions
The ZF 6HP26 six-speed automatic on most cars, a six-speed manual on some, and on a proportion of cars the six-speed SMG — an automated manual, which is not the same thing as the automatic, and is less durable than the manual. Which one you are looking at is a question you settle before you get interested in a cheap example.
And the two things that decide what a 550i costs you
One: the valve stem seals harden and the engine draws oil past them. The car smokes on a cold start and the seals need replacing — and the bill depends entirely on whether the garage owns a particular tool set.
Two: there is a coolant pipe that runs front to back through the engine, with a rubber seal at each end. Replacing it the conventional way means taking a large part of the engine apart. Somebody sensible does it another way.
Both of those have an expensive answer and a reasonable one, and which you get depends on who you take the car to rather than on the car. That is unusual, it is the reason this guide exists for this model, and it means the most useful work happens on the telephone before you go and look at anything.
How the figures in this guide work
How much work each job is, not what it costs. Every point in this guide carries an effort — an hour or two, half a day, a day, two or three days, or a week or more in the workshop — plus a line saying whether the money sits in the part or in getting to it. Where a documented hour count exists for this car, that is there too.
There are no prices, and that is deliberate. What a job costs depends on which country you are in and which workshop you walk into, so a figure I cannot verify is worse than no figure. If you want money, ask any workshop one question — what is your hourly rate? — and every hour in this guide becomes your own number, in your own currency. One question, and the answer is actually true for you.
None of this is advice about one particular car, because I have not seen the car you are looking at. Have every one of them inspected before you buy, by someone who knows this engine.
The six questions that decide whether this car is a good buy
A 550i is cheap in a way that has nothing to do with how good it is, and that makes the questions matter more rather than less. Six of them.
1 · Does it smoke, and has anybody done the valve stem seals?
Blue smoke on a cold start. And here is the part that decides the bill: there is more than one way to do this job, and the shorter one depends on a specific tool set that not every garage owns. So the question you put to a garage is not what it costs — it is which method they use.
2 · The coolant transfer pipe.
The pipe that runs through the engine with a rubber seal at each end. When those seals harden, coolant gets out and the car keeps needing a top-up. The same repair can be done three ways, and the gap between the lightest and the conventional method is larger than the value of a cheap 550i. Which three, and where you look for the leak, is in the buying guide.
3 · Which gearbox.
Automatic, manual, or SMG. The automatic is the ordinary answer and a good one; the manual is rare and sought after; the SMG has reported faults of its own — and on a car of this value that matters. Establish it before anything else.
4 · The battery, and everything it pretends to be.
Batteries go down early on this car, and a weak one does not simply fail to start it: it produces warnings all over the vehicle, and owners replace expensive parts that were never broken. Which warnings, and in what order you rule things out, is in the buying guide.
5 · Which iDrive it has, and whether it behaves.
Cars with the Professional navigation built before September 2008 have the CCC unit, which is known for rebooting itself and going black; after that they have CIC, which is better. Cars without that navigation have a simpler unit. It is not a mechanical problem and it is the thing you will touch every single day.
6 · What has already been paid for.
On this car the odometer tells you less than the folder does. The valve stem seals, the transfer pipe and the alternator bracket leave no trace except on paper.
What the honest answer to all six looks like
On a car with history, where the known items have demonstrably been done, an owner gets through roughly a third of the list in the first two years, and none of the big jobs — not because things break, but because things arrive that were always going to arrive. In workshop time that is a handful of half-days spread over two years, which is a very different thing from the one job on this car that can take a week.
And one sentence that applies to this model more than most: the cheapest 550i on the market is almost never the cheapest 550i to own. A car with the seals and the pipe behind it, at a higher price, is frequently the less expensive purchase — and this guide is mostly about how to tell which one you are looking at.
The buying guide takes each of these six apart, adds the things that are simply twenty years old, and says how much work they are, what tells you about them at a viewing, and whether they have to be done now or can wait years. It ends with a card you print and take with you, in the order you do it, including the two moments at a viewing that come only once.
Which years, which specification
The E60 was built from 2003 to 2010. The 550i replaced the 545i in 2005, and from March 2007 it was sold in Europe in facelifted form. Before it, the top petrol model below the M5 was the 545i with the 4.4-litre N62B44 and 333 PS. Same engine family, same faults, less of everything else.
What the facelift changed, and what it did not. From March 2007 the E60 was sold in Europe with revised styling and newly designed headlamps. The iDrive changed later: on cars with the Professional navigation, the newer CIC replaced the CCC from September 2008 production, so a facelift car built before then still has the older unit. Check the production date, not the styling.
Three transmissions, and one of them needs establishing. The ZF six-speed automatic on most cars, a six-speed manual on some, and the six-speed SMG on others. The manual is rare and worth seeking out; the SMG is the one to identify before you get excited about a cheap example.
And the M5, which is a different conversation. Same shell, S85 V10, 507 PS and a seven-speed SMG (a six-speed manual was a no-cost option in the US). If you are looking at an M5, the bodywork and the electronics chapters here still apply and none of the engine chapters do — and the M5's own problems are much larger than anything in this guide.
What to establish per car:
Which gearbox. First question, every time.
Which iDrive. On cars with the Professional navigation, CCC before September 2008 production and CIC after; without that navigation, a simpler unit. Check the production date.
Whether the valve stem seals and the transfer pipe have been done, and if the pipe was done, by which method. A car with a documented pipe repair is worth real money on this model and a good seller knows it.
Whether it has Active Steering, and whether it has ever thrown a warning. Not every car has it. On the ones that do, the module is expensive, and a warning is not always what it seems — so have it read out before anything is replaced.
Touring or saloon. The E61 Touring adds a tailgate wiring harness that fails, a panoramic roof that leaks when the drains block, and self-levelling rear air suspension. All three are known, all three cost money.
Beyond that, look for a car nobody has modified. Factory wheels, standard ride height, the original exhaust. On a car this cheap relative to its original price, an unmodified example usually means an owner who understood what he had.
What it is worth
This is the hardest thing to establish on your own and it does more than anything else to decide whether you buy well. I am not going to give you a price list — it varies by country and by month, and an out-of-date number is worse than no number. I am going to give you the method.
On this car, price the known jobs before you price the car. That sounds obvious and on a 550i it is the whole game: the difference between a car with the seals and the pipe done and one without is the two biggest jobs on the car, and it is completely invisible from the outside. Two cars that look identical on a forecourt can be very far apart in what they will cost you.
There are three kinds of car for sale, and each one deserves a different offer.
The documented car. Full history, invoices tied to readings, and an owner who knows when what was done. Asking price at the top of the market and, on this model, usually a bargain in disguise.
The tidy car with no paperwork. Drives well, looks well, and the owner says everything has been done. The most dangerous of the three on this particular car, because both of the expensive items are invisible and neither leaves a symptom until it arrives.
The project. Known work, price adjusted to match. Be careful here in a way you would not be with a cheaper model: a 550i needing the transfer pipe by the conventional method is worth close to nothing to most garages. If you are buying one of those, you are buying it because you have found somebody who does it the other way.
How to set the three against each other. Take the asking price, work through both lists, and add up what is coming in the first two years. Call that the entry price, and compare entry prices rather than asking prices.
And one thing that is specific to this model. These were sold in numbers, and twenty years on they have had very different lives, so the spread in condition at the same price and mileage is wide. That is bad news if you buy on price and very good news if you buy on paperwork.
Where to look: your country's big classified sites, the BMW specialists, and the auction sites. Follow the market for a month before you go and see anything. And pay attention to how long cars sit: a car that has been advertised for four months is usually a car that several people have inspected.
What it is actually like to own one
Anonymous, and that turns out to be a feature.
A 550i looks like a 520d. Same shell, same wheels on many cars, a small badge on the back. Nobody looks at you, nobody follows you, and nothing about it invites the attention that a big engine in an obvious car attracts. Then you open it up and there are eight cylinders and 367 PS with no turbo anywhere, and the noise arrives from somewhere behind the dashboard rather than from the exhaust.
The N62 is not a shouty engine. It is smooth and deep and it delivers everything low down, and the character of the car is effortlessness rather than urgency. There is a specific pleasure in a big naturally aspirated V8 doing almost nothing at 130 km/h, and it is a pleasure no turbocharged four will ever give you, however fast it is.
What it costs you in attention. More than a modern car, and mostly in electronics rather than mechanics. Keep a good battery in it, get warnings read out rather than guessed at, and do not ignore a coolant level that needs topping up. On this engine that is the one symptom you act on immediately.
And it drinks. A 4.8 V8 in a car of this weight. Be honest with yourself about that, and look up your own country's road tax before you fall in love, because in some countries that number alone decides the question.
What it gives back. A car that cost as much as a small house deposit in 2007 and now costs what a five-year-old hatchback costs, that does something no affordable new car does, and that nobody notices. That is not an investment and you should not call it one. It is the quickest car most people will never look at twice.
The buying guide — €24
Everything above is what the car is. This is what you check.
Ten faults that belong to this engine, taken apart one by one, with how much work each repair is and how to tell which of them you are looking at. Eighteen things that are simply twenty years old, every one with how much work it is, what tells you about it at a viewing, and whether it has to be done now, within a year or two, or not at all. Where corrosion on this car actually costs money, which is under it rather than on it, and the two water problems that belong to the Touring. The two jobs that decide what a 550i costs — the valve stem seals and the coolant pipe through the block — and the two telephone calls you make before you go and look at anything. The viewing in twelve steps, including the two moments that come only once. The sentences you say to the seller, and how to build an offer out of what you found.
And a card you print and take with you — sixty-five lines, in the order you do them. That comes as a separate file, because nobody wants to print a whole guide to take a few pages to a car park.
This is what one of the eighteen looks like
4 · Pixel loss in the instrument cluster
Repaired per display How you notice it: black blocks or missing segments. Cycle the menus so you see the whole area.
If it does not bother you, leave it. Plenty of owners live with it for years.
And this is how the card reads
- 1 · The cold start · stand behind the car
- 2 · The coolant · the most valuable question on this car
- 3 · The rest of the engine bay, cold
- 4 · Inside, ignition on · the long step on this car
- 5 · The boot, floor out
- 6 · Round the outside
What €24 buys, put next to what it saves
The valve stem seals are a day with the right tool and two or three days without it. The coolant transfer pipe is a modest job or a week or more in the workshop — the same fault, and the difference is entirely which workshop you walk into. The guide is €24. It will not stop any of that from being needed — but it does tell you which of them you are looking at before you agree a price, and that is the whole of the difference between paying for a car and paying for someone else's postponed maintenance.
Why there are no prices in it
Because a price we cannot verify is worse than no price, and because a price would be wrong for most of the people reading this anyway. Workshop rates across Europe differ widely, and so do parts prices. A quote from a specialist in one country tells you nothing in another.
What does not change is how much work a job is — that follows from what has to come off the car. So every point in the guide says whether it is an hour or two, half a day, a day, two or three days, or a week or more in the workshop, with a labour figure where a source gives one. And it says whether the money sits in the part or in getting to it, which is what lets you tell a fair quote from a bad one.
If you want a figure, ask any workshop one question — what is your hourly rate? — and every effort level in the guide becomes your own number, in your own currency. One question, and the answer is actually true for you.
How this guide was put together
Because you should know before you pay for it.
- Every fault and symptom comes from a source the guide names, the manufacturer's own documents first. The effort levels are our assessment, unless a source gives the hours.
- Where this guide rests on less evidence than usual — the bodywork of this model — it says so, instead of dressing up ordinary age checks as a weak-point list.
- The effort of every job is counted item by item and checked against the list before every edition.
- It says as plainly what you can leave alone as what you have to do. Six of the eighteen age points start from leave it.
Leave your email address at the checkout and both files arrive straight away: one guide and one card, as two pdfs. No subscription, no account.
The full guide · €24
25-page guide, A4 and phone · 5-page inspection card · instant PDF · VAT included
Have every car inspected before you buy by someone who knows this engine. This is general information about the model and not advice about a specific car.