Free guide · 2002–⁠2008 · M67 V8 diesel · 258–⁠330 PS

BMW 740d / 745d E65: 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.

Last Real Engines · updated 19 October 2026

In this guide · 6 chapters

1. Who built it, and what they built
2. The six questions that decide whether this car is a good buy
3. Which years, which specification
4. What it is worth
5. What it is actually like to own one
6. The buying guide — €24

Who built it, and what they built

A diesel that matched BMW's flagship V12 on peak torque, and reached it lower in the rev range: that is the 740d, and it is the reason this car gets a guide of its own.

In October 2002 BMW added the V8 diesel to the 7 Series and quoted 600 Nm between 1,900 and 2,500 rpm for it. In January 2003 BMW began delivering the car at the top of the same range, the V12 760i, and quoted 600 Nm at 3,950 rpm for that. Both figures are BMW's own. We found no BMW document that sets them side by side; the comparison is ours.

Then it went further. In spring 2005 the 740d made way for the 745d, with a new 4.4-litre engine and 700 Nm, and in the same press release, dated January 2005, BMW listed the V12 as "unverändert" (unchanged) at 600 Nm. From the 2006 model year the 745d had 750 Nm.

That comparison is about peak torque and nothing else. By BMW's figures the V12 had 445 PS against the diesel's 258 to 330, and reached 100 km/h in 5.5 seconds against 7.4 for the 740d and 6.6 for the last 745d. BMW also said the V12 had 500 Nm "über den weiten Drehzahlbereich von 1500 bis 6 000" rpm, so its curve was much flatter. It was the faster car. What the diesel had was the torque low down, and BMW's 2005 consumption figures put the 745d at 9.5 litres per 100 km on the EU cycle and the V12 at 13.4.

BMW itself treated the V8 diesel as its top diesel. In a 2013 history of its diesel engines BMW wrote that the 7 Series V8 diesel "remained the front runner for performance evaluation among the various models within the brand", and that the 745d was given "a power unit with a completely new design" in 2005 "in order to maintain this position." The rival it was measured against was Mercedes. When the 740d was announced in 2002, AUTO BILD noted that its figures sat just above those of the Mercedes diesel, "ganz sicher nicht zufällig" (certainly not by chance). Mercedes' own archive lists the S 400 CDI of 2002–2005 at 250 PS and 560 Nm, with a five-speed automatic.

Who built it

BMW built both cars as the E65, the 7 Series saloon launched in 2001. BMW calls this its fourth generation of the 7 Series. The V8 diesel itself is older: "In spring 1999, the first V8 diesel engine was presented by BMW," in the previous 7 Series, the E38 740d. In 2000 BMW said that all its diesel engines were developed at BMW Motoren GmbH in Austria. The E65 740d kept that engine's basic block, which BMW said "remains almost completely unchanged." The 745d threw the old block out and started again.

The 740d and the 730d had their world premiere at the Paris Motor Show in autumn 2002. In BMW's words, "Starting in mid-October, the BMW 730d and BMW 740d will supplement the model range in the 7 Series."

The engines: two of them, and not two versions of one

740d, October 2002 to spring 2005: 3.9 litres, iron block. A 3,901 cc V8 diesel making 258 PS (190 kW) at 4,000 rpm and 600 Nm from 1,900 to 2,500 rpm. The block is "ultra-strong grey-cast iron with vernicular graphite (GGV 500)" (BMW's spelling). This is second-generation common rail: "Maximum system pressure is up from 1,350 to 1,600 bar," with up to four injections per cycle. BMW describes the turbocharger as having variable turbine geometry, and BMW's parts catalogue lists two turbochargers, one for each bank of four cylinders. The engine runs on 6-volt glow plugs, and BMW said it would start "spontaneously at temperatures down to –5°C" and take "a mere two seconds to start in very cold temperatures of –20°C." It met EU3, and BMW's 2002 material does not mention a particulate filter.

745d, spring 2005 to 2008: 4.4 litres, aluminium block. BMW called the engine "vollkommen neu entwickelt" (completely newly developed) and a "Neukonstruktion" (a new design). It has 4,423 cc and an all-aluminium crankcase with grey cast-iron liners, and BMW said the engine was 30 kg lighter. At launch it made 300 PS (220 kW) at 4,000 rpm and 700 Nm from 1,750 to 2,500 rpm. From the 2006 model year it made 330 PS (242 kW) at 3,800 rpm and 750 Nm from 1,900 to 2,500 rpm. Most of the hardware is new:

• third-generation common rail at 1,600 bar, with piezo injectors and up to five injections per cycle. BMW says this was the first time it used piezo injection, in the 745d and the new 730d of 2005;
• a new generation of turbochargers with optimised turbine blades;
• electrically operated flaps in the intake ports, which BMW called a first on the V8;
• an electric EGR valve in place of the pneumatic one (EGR feeds some exhaust gas back into the intake);
• a diesel particulate filter as standard. BMW's 2005 press kit called the 745d the first V8 diesel in the world to have one fitted as standard. The car met EU4.

One name for each. The BMW press material we read uses no engine code for either car. BMW's parts catalogue files them as M67 (740d) and M67N (745d). Articles and parts listings use other codes as well, such as M67D44 for the 4.4. In this guide we write the 3.9 and the 4.4.

The gearbox

Both cars have a ZF 6HP32 six-speed automatic. BMW's parts catalogue lists it as the GA6HP32Z for both. In 2002 BMW wrote that "The 730d and 740d are the first diesel cars in the world to enter the market with six-speed automatic transmission (ZF 6HP26 and, respectively, ZF 6HP32)." The six-cylinder 730d got the 6HP26, and the V8 diesels got the 6HP32. BMW described the gearbox as "Not requiring any service or maintenance", and its 2002 spec table gives the transmission fluid as "Lifelong". Gear selection is electronic. When you switch the engine off and eject the key, the gearbox puts itself into Park. Drive goes to the rear axle, with a final drive of 3.08 on the 740d and 2.92 on the 745d (BMW's catalogue).

The body and the chassis

A saloon, with the standard wheelbase only. BMW's 2002 press kit says the diesels "come exclusively with the standard wheelbase of the 7 Series." For the 745d we have no statement as explicit as that, but every BMW document we read points the same way. BMW's German price list of March 2005 lists the 745d only in the short body. BMW presented the 730Ld of September 2005 as its first long-wheelbase diesel. BMW's European parts catalogue lists the 730Ld as the only long-wheelbase diesel. As far as BMW's documents show, there was no 745Ld.

The E65 body has an aluminium bonnet and aluminium side panels, and BMW gave 82 per cent of the body-in-white (the bare welded shell) as high-strength steel. The axles are aluminium. BMW offered three chassis options on the diesels: Dynamic Drive, which replaces the conventional anti-roll bars with two hydraulically operated active ones, Electronic Damper Control (EDC), and rear air suspension with self-levelling. The steering is hydraulic with Servotronic. The 740d has 348 mm front and 345 mm rear brake discs. According to BMW's 2005 kit, the 745d has "los frenos del 760i/Li" (the V12's brakes) and 18-inch wheels as standard.

How many there are

We do not know, and we would rather say so than guess. We found no production figure for the 740d or the 745d from BMW or anyone else. BMW did publish figures for the whole range. By January 2005 almost 160,000 cars of this generation had been delivered worldwide, and the petrol 745i/Li accounted for "über 50 Prozent" of them. By mid-2006 the total was close to 235,000. Those numbers say the petrol V8 was what most buyers chose. They do not say how many chose the diesel V8.

How the figures in this guide work

We count work, not money. Every point in the buying guide carries an effort level: an hour or two, half a day, a day, two or three days, or a week or more in the workshop. Each one also says whether the money goes on the part or on the labour of reaching it.

There are no prices, and that is deliberate. What a job costs depends on your country and your workshop, and a figure we cannot check is worse than no figure. If you want an amount, ask a workshop one question: what is your hourly rate? With that answer, every effort level in the buying guide becomes a number in your own currency.

None of this is advice about a particular car, because we have not seen the car you are looking at. Have any car you are serious about inspected before you buy, by someone who knows these cars.

The six questions that decide whether this car is a good buy

These cars are now between eighteen and twenty-four years old. On this model, little is published about the engine, and that makes the paperwork and the fault memory (the record of faults the car's control units have stored) unusually important. Six questions.

1 · Which car is it, exactly: a 740d or a 745d, which 745d, and when was it built?

The 740d and the 745d share a body, but they do not share an engine. They have different blocks, different injection, different emissions hardware and different brakes. The 745d also comes in two outputs, 300 PS and 330 PS. The build month decides which BMW bulletins and campaigns can apply to the car. An advert that gets any of this wrong deserves a second question.

2 · The recalls and campaigns: are they done, and can somebody show you?

Britain's recall database lists several 7 Series campaigns from these years. Among them are the seat heating, the rear shock absorber mountings, oil getting into the brake servo through the vacuum pump, and the high-pressure fuel pump on E65s built over the winter of 2004–05. Those records name no engines, and the V8 diesels do not appear in the BMW UK material we read. We could not reach Germany's recall database to check the campaigns in mainland Europe. In its 2005 used-car test, AUTO BILD warned that a fault can come from a recall the previous owner ignored. A BMW dealer can check by VIN, the chassis number.

3 · What does the engine's history show? On this car, the history is most of the evidence.

We found no document from BMW, a regulator or a reputable specialist that names a typical fault on either engine. The public archive of BMW's US service bulletins covers the petrol 7 Series of these years, and we found no V8 diesel in it. One magazine was outspoken. In 2005 AUTO BILD advised against the 740d's V8, saying the 3.9 had been squeezed to its limits to beat Mercedes in the race for the most powerful diesel car, occasional engine failures included. That is one sentence from one magazine, with no mechanism and no numbers behind it, and we found nothing to confirm or rule it out. So you need invoices: what oil, how often, and what has been replaced and why. BMW's 2002 service concept allowed up to 40,000 km (25,000 miles) between oil changes. The invoices will show you how this car was actually serviced.

4 · The gearbox: has anybody ever changed the oil?

BMW sold the 6HP32 as needing no service and gave its fluid as lifelong. ZF, which makes the gearbox, now recommends changing the oil at regular intervals, "especially In operating conditions with high temperatures and loads, or with unknown vehicle use in the past." After eighteen years or more, few cars have a past you can fully know. BMW lists the 6HP26 for the 730d and for the petrol V8 and V12 cars. Advice written for that gearbox does not automatically apply to this one.

5 · What is fitted underneath: air suspension, Dynamic Drive, Adaptive Drive?

Each option adds hardware: hydraulic active anti-roll bars with their own valve block, lines and pump, or air springs with an air supply unit and level sensors. The Czech magazine auto.cz says the rear self-levelling can give trouble and calls Dynamic Drive an expensive extra you are better off without. That is one magazine's view, and we found no BMW document on how either system fails. AUTO BILD reported in 2005 that the E65's chassis suffers from the car's weight, naming the rear control-arm bushes, the front ball joints and the track-rod ends.

6 · The electrics: does everything work, and what is in the fault memory?

This is a car with a great many control units. BMW issued a bulletin for E65s built from September 2002 to June 2003 about "various complaints caused by software errors." For cars built from March 2004 it told its US workshops that a flat battery "is often the symptom and not the cause." AUTO BILD wrote in 2005 that complaints about the electronics fell on cars built from 2003 onwards. You will learn little about any of this on a test drive.

What the answers add up to

Take a car whose identity matches its papers, with its campaigns done, an oil history you can read, gearbox oil changed at least once and a clean fault memory. In its first two years an owner of that car will mostly face the ordinary work of an old luxury saloon. Without that history, you cannot tell whether the heavy jobs are still to come. On this model, more than most, the history is what separates a cheap car from a good one, because so little else about the engine is written down.

None of that helps unless you know what each question is made of. The buying guide takes the six apart and adds everything that simply comes with eighteen to twenty-four years of age. For each point it says 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 we found nothing documented, it says so. It comes with a card you print and take with you, listing the checks in the order you do them.

Which years, which specification

740d or 745d: the facelift decides it. BMW announced the 2005 facelift and the 745d in the same press release, "Die BMW 7er Reihe ab Frühjahr 2005", with a German launch date of 9 April 2005. The release says "Der BMW 740d macht Platz für den BMW 745d" (the 740d makes way for the 745d). The listings we found show the 740d ending as the 745d began. In practice, then, a 740d is a pre-facelift car and a 745d is a facelift car. If an advert says otherwise, ask why.

How to recognise the facelift. BMW lists a raised "Powerdome" in the bonnet, a revised kidney grille, headlights and front apron, a new chrome strip at the rear (in body colour with the Shadow Line option), new rear lights and a new rear apron. Xenon headlights and headlight washers became standard, along with white indicators. Under the skin, BMW widened the rear track by 14 mm and revised the axle kinematics. The iDrive menus were also updated.

The two 745ds. BMW's first 745d had 300 PS and 700 Nm. "Entering the 2006 model year", BMW wrote in July 2005, it had 330 PS and 750 Nm. BMW does not give the first build month for the stronger car. AUTO BILD wrote that it came "im Herbst" (in the autumn), half a year after launch. ADAC's model catalogue, which lists sales periods rather than production dates, has the 300 PS car from April to July 2005 and the 330 PS car from September 2005. One magazine reported in 2005 that the extra power could be retrofitted to earlier cars. We found no BMW document that says so. On a 745d built in 2005, ask which output it has and how the seller knows.

Standard wheelbase only. This is certain for the 740d. For the 745d it holds as far as BMW's documents show: BMW's first long-wheelbase diesel was the 730Ld, from September 2005. A "745Ld" in an advert deserves a question.

Left-hand drive, by BMW's parts catalogue, and probably never sold new in Britain or America. The catalogue lists both cars with left-hand drive and nothing else, while it lists the 730d with both. In July 2002 BMW UK announced that the 730d would arrive in March 2003, and called it "the first time that BMW has launched a 7 Series diesel model in the UK." BMW UK's January 2005 price list contains no 745d. For the US, BMW's parts catalogue lists only petrol E65s, the 745i, 750i and 760i and the Alpina B7, and none of the US bulletins and recalls we screened for these years mentions a diesel. BMW never says in so many words that the V8 diesels were not sold in either country. We put that together from these documents.

The options that matter, and what to ask. The chassis options decide how much hardware there is to check. They are recorded on the car's option list, which a BMW dealer or a VIN decoder can print. Ask for that list, and look for these codes from BMW's parts catalogue:

• S220A: rear air suspension with self-levelling. An option on the E65 for both the 740d and the 745d.
• S223A: Electronic Damper Control (EDC). Listed for the 740d.
• S229A: Dynamic Drive, the active anti-roll bars. Listed for the 740d. A car with it also has a valve block, its own control unit, pressure lines and a tandem power-steering pump.
• S2VAA: Adaptive Drive, from the facelift. In BMW's words it "fasst nun „Dynamic Drive“ und das kontinuierlich verstellbare Dämpferkontrollsystem „EDC-K“ zusammen": Dynamic Drive and adjustable damping together.
• P330A: the sports package, from the facelift, which BMW describes as sporting suspension combined with Dynamic Drive.

A car with none of them has the standard chassis. That is not a lesser car, just one with less to go wrong.

Two naming traps. The first is the engine code: see One name for each in the first chapter. The second is the gearbox. BMW lists the ZF 6HP26 for the 730d and the petrol V8 and V12 cars, and the 6HP32 for the 740d and 745d. When a part or a bulletin names the 6HP26, it is not about this car.

And a page not to trust. BMW Group Classic's own web page for the 745d is labelled as AI-generated. It describes a 3.9-litre with 286 PS and 580 Nm, while its own table gives 4,423 cc and 220 kW. If an advert's figures look odd, that page may be where they came from.

Beyond that, look for a car nobody has modified. Look for factory wheels, standard ride height, the original exhaust and the original engine software. On a 745d that claims an output it was not built with, the last of those matters more than usual. An unmodified car often tells you something about how it was kept.

What it is worth

Value is the hardest thing to work out on your own, and it does as much as anything to decide whether you buy well. We are not going to give you a price list. Prices vary by country and by month, and a list would be out of date before you used it. We will give you the method instead.

On this car, the history sets the price. Take two cars with the same mileage. One has its campaigns done, an oil history you can follow, the gearbox oil changed and a clean fault memory. The other has none of that. The difference usually outweighs colour, specification and even mileage. It matters more here than on most cars, because so little is published about the engine that the history has to stand in for it.

There are three kinds of car for sale, and each deserves a different offer.

The documented car. It has a full history, invoices tied to mileages, a dealer printout of the campaigns, and an owner who knows what was done and when. Expect an asking price at the top of the market. It is usually justified.

The tidy car with no paperwork. It drives well, it pulls hard, and the owner says it has always been serviced. This is the hardest of the three to judge. The big items on this car are the engine, its injection and turbos, the gearbox and the suspension options, and a test drive tells you little about any of them.

The project. It has known faults, and the price has been adjusted to match. A car in limp mode (the reduced-power mode it falls back on when it detects a fault) that nobody has diagnosed is not a project. It is an unknown.

How to compare them. Take the asking price, work through the questions in this guide (and the lists in the buying guide, if you have it), and add up what is coming in the first two years. Call that the entry price, and compare entry prices rather than asking prices. Price the 740d and the 745d separately, and the two 745ds separately too. They are different cars.

Where to look. Use the big classified sites in the countries where these cars were sold, the BMW specialists and the auction sites. In a right-hand-drive country, expect a left-hand-drive car, because BMW's parts catalogue lists no other kind. Expect, too, that a seller may not know which of the two engines the car has. Follow the market for a month before you go to see anything.

What it is actually like to own one

It is a big, heavy, quiet car built to cover distance, and the testers kept coming back to how quiet. In 2005 AUTO BILD drove the 745d against the Audi A8 4.2 TDI and called it a "flüsternden Riesen", a whispering giant. The tester added that only with the window open could he hear "einen fetten, wummernden Diesel-Beat" from the front: a fat, thumping diesel beat. In January 2007, in a test against the Audi and the Mercedes S 420 CDI, the same magazine called its engine a brawny one you can hardly hear, pushing the 2.2-tonne car along like an express train.

It lives on torque. BMW quotes 6.6 seconds to 100 km/h for the 330 PS 745d and 7.4 for the 740d. But the figure the car is about is the torque low down: from 1,900 rpm on the 740d and the 330 PS 745d, from 1,750 on the first 745d. The testers did not find it the fastest of its rivals. In 2005 the 745d kept up with the A8 to 100 km/h but was almost four seconds behind it by 200. In 2007 AUTO BILD found it slower to accelerate than the Mercedes, although it was the stronger and lighter car, and blamed more slip in the torque converter. The magazine also held two things against the BMW: its drag coefficient of 0.29, less favourable than the others', and its 12.40-metre turning circle, the largest of the three. Even so, the magazine judged that "der hubraumstärkere BMW", the bigger-engined BMW, set the standard for torque in that test.

The facelift changed how it drives. The 2005 test was blunt about it. The spring facelift had turned the former "Dickschiff" (supertanker) into a far more attractive and genuinely agile luxury car, and the tester credited the new axle kinematics and the wider rear track: "Bravo!" The BMW still lost that comparison narrowly. In 2007 the verdict was that the BMW, "nicht mehr taufrisch" (no longer in its first youth), was losing touch a little.

What it uses. BMW's EU figures are 9.7 litres per 100 km for the 740d and 9.5 for the 745d. In the 2007 test, AUTO BILD found that the 745d stayed at about ten litres even when driven briskly. That made it, in the magazine's words, a good alternative to the thirsty 760i, which used more than 16 litres driven the same way.

It is full of ideas from 2001. The E65 introduced iDrive, BMW's controller-and-screen system. BMW admitted in 2006 that the operating concept and the design had been "teils kontrovers diskutiert", partly controversial when new. The Czech magazine auto.cz, testing a used one, headlined that iDrive is "jenom pro zlost": only there to annoy you. The diesels start with a button, which BMW said in 2002 was a first on a diesel car. The parking brake works with a button and has an Automatic Hold function. Comfort Access, which opens the car and starts the engine without the key leaving your pocket, and Soft-Close doors, which pull themselves shut, were options. All of it is part of the experience, and all of it is something to check.

What it gives back. You get a diesel V8 with the peak torque of BMW's own V12, or more, in a quiet, long-legged saloon that BMW rated at a little under ten litres per 100 km. It is not an investment, and this guide will not pretend it is. It is a car you buy to use.

The buying guide — €24

Everything above is what the car is. This is what you check.

Nine faults that belong to these engines, taken apart one by one, with how much work each repair is and how to tell which of them you are looking at. Sixteen things that are simply eighteen to twenty-four 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. What the sources document about corrosion and water on the E65 — and, just as plainly, what they do not. Why the 740d and 745d have the ZF 6HP32 and not the 6HP26 of the 730d, what BMW's "lifetime fill" means next to ZF's own advice, and which chassis options a car can have. 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-six 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 sixteen looks like

12 · The parking brake and Automatic Hold

An hour or two to diagnose · Easy access

The E65's parking brake is a button on the dashboard, left of the steering wheel, and BMW's 2001 press kit describes three jobs for it. It applies and releases the parking brake. Held down while driving, "verzögert das System per DSC-Hydraulik über die vier Radbremsen" — it brakes the car through all four wheel brakes, as an emergency brake. And the "Automatic Hold" function "betätigt selbständig hydraulisch die Betriebsbremse" — it applies the service brakes by itself, to hold the car when it has stopped. The parking function itself is mechanical at the wheel: the parts catalogue lists an actuator with its own control unit, two Bowden cables to drum-brake shoes, and an emergency release for the actuator. It is not an electric calliper, so a quote should not price it as one.

We found no bulletin on faults in it. Leave it when the button applies and releases the brake, and Automatic Hold holds the car at a standstill. Now, as a diagnosis, if either does not.

And this is how the card reads

• 1 · Round the outside, before anybody starts it
• 2 · The boot and the floor
• 3 · Under the bonnet, cold · engine off, key out
• 4 · The cold start · the seller starts it; nobody revs it
• 5 · At parking speed · before you join the road
• 6 · The drive · gently until it is fully warm

What €24 buys, put next to what it saves

The heaviest jobs on these engines — the turbos, the high-pressure pump, the injectors — have no documented effort level, and the guide says so rather than guess. The cheapest check of all is a dealer printout of the recalls and campaigns by VIN. 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 no manufacturer document covers this engine — and for the V8 diesel that is often — it says so, instead of borrowing faults from another BMW engine.
• 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. Eleven of the sixteen 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.

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.

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