Free guide · 2003–2010 · 645Ci and 650i · N62 V8 · 333–367 PS
BMW 6 Series E63: 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 car people argued about.
The E63 arrived in 2003 out of Chris Bangle's design department, and the boot lid alone generated more column inches than most cars manage in a lifetime. Twenty years later the arguing has stopped, and what is left is a very long, very low four-seat coupé that looks like nothing else on the road — because nothing else on the road was allowed to look like that.
Underneath it is a 5 Series of the same era, which is the useful part: the mechanicals are shared, the knowledge is out there, and the parts are not exotic.
The engine
The N62, in two sizes. The 645Ci has the N62B44: 4,398 cc, 333 PS. From 2005 the 650i has the N62B48: 4,799 cc, 367 PS. Both are naturally aspirated V8s with Valvetronic — BMW's variable valve lift, where load is controlled by how far the inlet valves open rather than mainly by the throttle butterfly, which is still there.
That is worth understanding before you buy one, because it explains the shape of this guide. 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 transmissions
The ZF 6HP26 six-speed automatic on most cars, a six-speed manual on some, and on some the SMG — BMW's automated version of the six-speed manual, offered on the 645Ci and on the 650i. The manual is rare and sought after; the SMG is the one to establish before you get excited about a cheap car.
And the one thing that decides what an E63 costs you
There is a coolant pipe that runs front to back through the engine, with a rubber seal at each end. BMW fitted it before the timing chain cover went on, so renewing it the factory way means taking the timing chain cover off, and much of the engine with it. When the front seal goes — and it does — the same fault is anything from a modest job to a week or more in the workshop, depending entirely on which of three repair routes the workshop is willing to take.
Whether the person quoting you knows about the cheap route is the difference between a manageable bill and a car that gets written off over a coolant leak. It has a chapter of its own in the buying guide, and it is the reason this guide exists for this model.
How the figures in this guide work
How much work each job is, not what it costs. Most points in this guide carry 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
These are now among the cheapest ways into a big BMW V8, and that is exactly why the questions matter. Six of them.
1 · The coolant transfer pipe.
The pipe that runs through the engine with a rubber seal at each end. When a seal goes, the same repair is done three ways — one of them at a week or more in the workshop. Which of the three a workshop offers decides the bill, which is why this is question one. What the three are, and when to expect the leak, is in the buying guide.
2 · The valve stem seals — and whether the garage has the tool.
The N62's other known item. The car smokes on start-up and the seals need replacing, 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 ask a garage is not what it costs, it is which method they use.
3 · The alternator bracket gasket.
BMW sandwiched the aluminium alternator bracket between the crankcase and two oil cooler pipes, with a rubber seal. It hardens, and then you have an impressive oil leak onto the alternator. Not catastrophic, and not small either.
4 · Which iDrive it has, and whether it behaves.
Early cars have the CCC unit, which is known for rebooting itself and going black. Later cars have CIC, which is better. There is an upgrade route. It is not a mechanical problem and it is the thing you will touch every single day.
5 · 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.
6 · What has already been paid for.
On this car the odometer tells you less than the folder does. The transfer pipe, the valve stem seals 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 any other in this series: the cheapest E63 on the market is almost never the cheapest E63 to own. A car with the transfer pipe and the valve stem seals behind it, at a higher price, is frequently the less expensive purchase — and the 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 gives every one of them what tells you about it at a viewing and whether it has to be done now or can wait years, and most of them how much work it is. 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
Built from 2003 to 2010, as the E63 coupé and the E64 convertible.
This guide covers the two V8s, and the split is 2005. The 645Ci with the 4.4-litre N62B44 and 333 PS until 2005; the 650i with the 4.8-litre N62B48 and 367 PS from 2005. The later car is the one to have if everything else is equal — more torque, later electronics — but "everything else is equal" almost never applies on a twenty-year-old car, and a documented 645Ci beats an undocumented 650i comfortably. The 6 Series was also sold as the 630i, with a six-cylinder engine, from 2004 — a different engine with different faults, and not what this guide is about.
Three transmissions, and one of them needs establishing. The ZF six-speed automatic on most cars, a six-speed manual on some, and the SMG, on the 645Ci and the 650i alike. The SMG has reported faults of its own, and it is not what people picture when they imagine this car. On any example, find out which one you are looking at before anything else.
And the M6, which is a different conversation. Same shell, S85 V10, 507 PS, seven-speed SMG. If you are looking at an M6, the bodywork and the electronics chapters here still apply and none of the engine chapters do.
What to establish per car:
Which iDrive. CCC on early cars, CIC later. It decides how the car feels to use every day.
Whether the transfer pipe and the valve stem seals 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.
Convertible only: the roof. Every mechanism and every seal, operated end to end, twice.
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 an E63 it is the whole game: the difference between a car with the transfer pipe and the valve stem seals done and one without is a large difference in workshop time, and from the outside you cannot see which is which. Two cars that look identical on a forecourt can be 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 whether either of the expensive items has been done leaves no trace except on paper.
The project. Known work, price adjusted to match. Be careful here in a way you would not be with a cheaper model: an E63 needing a transfer pipe by the conventional method is worth less than 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.
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.
What it is actually like to own one
It is long. That is the first thing, and you notice it in every car park for the first month. Then you get used to it and you start using the car for what it is: a two-door, four-seat coupé nearly five metres long that covers three hundred kilometres of motorway without you noticing, in near silence, on a V8 that is barely working.
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. That is not a criticism. 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-cylinder will ever give you, however fast it is.
Then there is the shape. You will get comments. Twenty years ago they were negative and now they are not, and that shift has happened to this car more decisively than to almost any other modern BMW. Owners tend to be quietly pleased about it.
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 4.4 or 4.8 V8 in a coupé of more than 1.7 tonnes. Be honest with yourself about that.
What it gives back. A car that cost as much as a house deposit in 2005 and now costs what a used hatchback costs, that does something no new car does, and whose design has aged into being admired. That is not an investment and you should not call it one. It is something other than throwing money away.
The buying guide — €24
Everything above is what the car is. This is what you check.
Six 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. Fourteen 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 water gets into this car and what it reaches, which on an E63 matters more than rust does. The coolant pipe that runs through the block: why the factory repair takes a week or more in the workshop, what the two alternatives involve, and the one question at a viewing that tells you which one you are looking at. The viewing in thirteen 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 — fifty-seven 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 fourteen looks like
5 · Parking sensors and the reversing camera
An hour or two per sensor · cheap part, easy access Reported failing through moisture. See the water chapter: if several go at once, look for where the water is getting in rather than replacing sensors one by one. How you notice it: test every sensor and the camera at the viewing.
Leave it unless it bothers you — but investigate the water if more than one has failed.
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 coolant transfer pipe is a week or more in the workshop by the factory method, or a modest job by another route. Valve stem seals are a long job either way, and whether the garage has the tool decides how long. 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. Four of the fourteen 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
22-page guide, A4 and phone · 4-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.