Free guide · 2012–⁠2017 · 3.0 tri-turbo diesel · 381 PS

BMW M550d xDrive F10 / F11: 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 13 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

Three turbochargers, 740 Nm and four-wheel drive, in a saloon or a Touring you can load for a week away: that is the M550d xDrive, and it is still the reason to want one. The engine is a diesel BMW developed for it and for the X5 M50d and X6 M50d; the chassis was set up by BMW M GmbH. It came as an F10 saloon and an F11 Touring, both built in Dingolfing, premiered at the Geneva Motor Show in March 2012 and in German showrooms from 12 May that year.

BMW called it an M Performance Automobile, and the label tells you what the car is. The new range was "based on current BMW models", with M GmbH carrying out "carefully targeted technical and design modifications", and it launched with four cars: the M550d saloon and Touring and the X5 and X6 M50d. Dr Friedrich Nitschke, then president of M GmbH, aimed it at "customers looking for more emotionality and more performance, but who don't want to forgo the everyday usability of their cars." CAR magazine put it more plainly: "the M550d is not a proper M car", but one that slots in above the 535d and below the M5.

The engine

A 2,993 cc six-cylinder in-line diesel: 381 PS (280 kW) at 4,000–4,400 rpm, 740 Nm from 2,000 to 3,000 rpm, and a maximum engine speed of 5,400 rpm. For scale, BMW quoted 680 Nm for the V8 of the 2011 F10 M5.

Three turbochargers, taking turns. In BMW's words, "For the first time, a BMW engine will feature three turbochargers": two small high-pressure units and one larger low-pressure unit. One small turbo works from just above idle; the large one joins at about 1,500 rpm, and together they deliver the full 740 Nm. At around 2,700 rpm, if the driver asks for more, a vacuum-modulated exhaust flap opens a second route for the exhaust, and the second small turbo, sitting in that bypass, joins in. CAR, from the driver's seat: "you can forget about the three steps bit. The whole process is so seamless, you're never really aware of all that wizardry going on."

BMW's "world first", read closely. BMW said it would become "the world's first carmaker to present a diesel engine which expands the principle of multi-stage turbocharging to incorporate a third turbocharger." That is narrower than "the first diesel with three turbos", and it needs to be: at Geneva in 2005 Mercedes-Benz had shown a concept car, the SLK 320 CDI Tri-Turbo Vision, with a three-turbo diesel.

The power comes from the core. BMW's own point: the output "is generated not in the turbochargers but in the core of the basic engine". Peak combustion pressure rose "from the 185 bar of the most powerful diesel engine in the existing BMW line-up to 200 bar", and to take it BMW strengthened the crankcase, the cylinder head, the crankshaft and the connecting rods. The piezo injectors work at up to 2,200 bar.

Clean ahead of the rules. A particulate filter and an oxidation catalyst share one housing close to the engine, and a NOx storage catalyst helped the car meet EU6, a standard "not due to come into force until 2014." There is no AdBlue: in 2018 BMW described the M550d's aftertreatment as working "exclusively via a NOx storage catalytic converter."

The gearbox and the four-wheel drive

One gearbox: an eight-speed Sports automatic with paddles, two automatic programmes and a manual mode; BMW's parts catalogue lists it as the GA8HP70X. Drive goes to all four wheels through xDrive, whose "M-specific tuning accentuates the traditional rear-wheel bias of BMW cars." On top sits Performance Control, standard, which brakes the inside rear wheel in a corner while adding drive — BMW even says it lets the driver "execute controlled drifts."

The body: saloon and Touring

Both bodies were there from launch. The Touring has air suspension with self-levelling at the rear as standard; the saloon has coil springs at the rear. Both get M-specific rubber bearings, anti-roll bars, springs and dampers, and hydraulic steering with M-specific Servotronic. On the F10, BMW lists the doors, bonnet and front side panels as aluminium. You recognise one by its Ferric Grey mirror caps and "M550d" lettering on the boot lid.

How many there are

We do not know, and we would rather say so than guess: we found no production figure from BMW or anyone else. What BMW did publish, in 2018, are the production periods — March 2012 to October 2016 for the saloon, March 2012 to February 2017 for the Touring. The one number you will see, around 11,400, is the count of M550d and 750d cars together in BMW's 2018 software recall. It says how many got the wrong software, not how many were built.

How the figures in this guide work

How much work each job is, not what it costs. 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 — plus a line saying whether the money sits in the part or in getting to it.

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 we cannot verify is worse than no figure. If you want an amount, ask any workshop one question — what is your hourly rate? — and every effort level in the buying guide becomes your own number, in your own currency.

None of this is advice about one particular car, because we 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 cars are now between nine and fourteen years old, and on this model the paperwork and a read-out of the fault memory tell you more than the paint. Six questions.

1 · The recalls and campaigns — done, and can somebody show you?

In 2018 BMW recalled around 11,400 M550d and 750d cars because a software update had been "mistakenly allocated" to them; they had the correct software when new. According to Germany's motoring club ADAC, the wrong software made the NOx storage catalyst regenerate too rarely, and the fix is a free update. Separately, BMW ran a campaign on the EGR system of six-cylinder diesels — the system that feeds some exhaust back into the intake — because leaking coolant could build up with soot and oil and, in extreme cases, cause a fire. BMW names build periods, not engine versions — so whether this M550d is included is a question for its VIN, the chassis number, and a BMW dealer can answer it.

2 · How was it driven — and what has the particulate filter been through?

The filter has to burn off its soot at high temperature, and that needs the right kind of driving. In bulletins for the related N57 diesels sold in the US, BMW says frequent short trips lead to a clogged filter, and that a filter full of ash cannot be cleaned. A car that spent its life on long runs is a different proposition from one that did the school run.

3 · What oil, how often — and does the history show it?

The timing chain sits at the gearbox end of the engine, and BMW's N57 training material says "correct lubrication of timing gear systems that use this type of chain is essential." Motorschmiede, a German engine workshop, says chain wear on the N57 is much rarer than on the four-cylinder N47. Invoices with the oil and the date on them are the evidence.

4 · The turbos and their controls — has anything been replaced, and why?

Three turbos are switched by vacuum-operated flaps, valves and hoses. Motorschmiede says that on the twin- and triple-turbo versions of this engine those flaps, actuators and lines can stick or leak, and that a disturbed oil supply is a common cause of turbo damage. A loss of power can be a hose, a sensor, the EGR valve or a turbocharger — very different jobs.

5 · The gearbox and the transfer case — has anybody changed the oil?

We could not find a BMW interval for either. ZF, as reported by the trade magazine Professional Motor Mechanic in 2014, calls its eight-speed maintenance-free under normal conditions yet recommends an oil and filter change. For the transfer case, BimmerWorld, a US specialist, warns that "lack of maintenance will wear out the internal clutches and require a rebuild or complete replacement."

6 · Saloon or Touring — and what is fitted underneath?

The Touring has rear air springs as standard; Adaptive Drive was an option on both, and a car with it has more hardware to check. BMW lists the F10 saloon's doors as aluminium, and issued a bulletin for corrosion at their edges.

What the answers add up to

On a car with its campaigns done, a clear oil history, a life of long journeys and its transmission fluids looked after, an owner mostly faces ordinary work in the first two years — half a day here and there. On a car without that history, you cannot tell whether the heavy jobs are still to come. That is what separates a cheap M550d from a good one.

None of that is useful unless you know what it is made of. The buying guide takes each of these six apart, adds the things that are simply nine to fourteen years old, and says for each one 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. It comes with a card you print and take with you, with the checks in the order you do them.

Which years, which specification

Saloon and Touring, both from the start. BMW launched both bodies together and gives both a production start of March 2012. ADAC's model history lists the 2012 introduction as "nur Limousine" — saloon only. We follow BMW.

Left-hand drive, by BMW's parts catalogue, and not planned for the US. The catalogue lists the M550d with left-hand drive and nothing else; Car Enthusiast: "the M550d xDrive is only available in left-hand drive." CAR blamed the four-wheel drive — "the steering column is in the way of the transfer 'box" — and Auto Express reported that "BMW says this engine will come to the UK in the next-generation 5 Series instead." BMW's US press site carried the launch release with a note: "not planned for the US market."

The 2013 facelift. BMW's spec sheets for it are valid from July 2013, and the output did not change. What did, by BMW's press kit, is mostly what you see and touch: Adaptive LED headlights on the options list for the first time, side indicators in the mirrors, new rear lights with thin LED strips, and an optional touch-sensitive iDrive controller. Official consumption moved slightly, from 6.3 to 6.2 l/100 km for the saloon and from 6.4 to 6.3 for the Touring.

Standard and optional. Standard on both: the M-specific springs, dampers, bearings and anti-roll bars, and 19-inch M wheels on run-flat tyres (245/40 front, 275/35 rear on the saloon; one size, 245/40, listed for the Touring). At launch, Dynamic Damper Control and Adaptive Drive "including anti-roll control" were options; the 2013 spec sheet lists only Adaptive Drive. The steering is hydraulic with Servotronic on every one. Integral Active Steering, an option elsewhere in the 5 Series, is not on the M550d's spec sheets; in BMW's 2013 tables it appears only with electric steering, on rear-wheel-drive versions.

The engine code trap. Articles call this engine the N57S. BMW's parts catalogue files the M550d as "M550dX-N57X", and "N57S" turns up next to the twin-turbo 535d in the same catalogue; BMW's 2018 recall statement uses a third form, "N57B30S1". For parts, search under N57X and the VIN, not under N57S.

And the car that came after. The G30 M550d of 2017 has a different engine with "four turbochargers", 400 PS and 760 Nm — 19 PS and 20 Nm more than "the predecessor model", by BMW's count — and Integral Active Steering as standard. Useful to know when an advert mixes the two up.

Beyond that, look for a car nobody has modified. Factory wheels, standard ride height, the original exhaust and the original engine software. On a car whose software was the subject of a recall, the last point matters more than usual, and a standard car usually tells you something about how it was kept.

What it is worth

This is the hardest thing to establish 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 — it varies by country and by month, and it would be out of date before you used it. We are going to give you the method.

On this car, the history sets the price. Two M550ds with the same mileage can be very different cars: one with its campaigns done, a documented oil history and its transmission fluids changed, and one without. That difference usually outweighs colour, specification and even mileage. Expect a high reading — sport auto's long-term test car covered 85,000 km in a year — and judge how the car got there rather than how far it went.

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

The documented car. Full history, invoices tied to mileages, a dealer printout showing the campaigns done, and an owner who knows what was done and when. Asking price at the top of the market, usually justified.

The tidy car with no paperwork. Drives well, pulls hard, and the owner says it has always been serviced. The hardest of the three, because the big items on this car — the chain, the turbos and their controls, the transfer case, the particulate filter — are exactly what you cannot judge on a test drive.

The project. Known faults, price adjusted to match. An M550d in limp mode — the reduced-power mode the car falls back on when it detects a fault — with no diagnosis is not a project but an unknown.

How to set the three against each other. 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 saloon and the Touring separately.

Where to look: your country's big classified sites, the BMW specialists and the auction sites. In a right-hand-drive country, expect to be looking at left-hand-drive cars whatever you do: BMW's parts catalogue lists no other kind. Follow the market for a month before you go and see anything.

What it is actually like to own one

It is a large, heavy, very fast car that wants to cover distance, and most of what the testers wrote comes back to that. CAR called it "a fantastic autobahn cruiser with supersaloon overtaking go, supermini economy and the security of four-wheel drive that ski-crazy Continental Europeans require." Chris Harris, for PistonHeads: "Specify the Touring body and you surely have one of the most complete cars on sale. A diesel with massive performance potential; a ski-taxi to shame Audi."

It is quick, and it lives on torque. BMW quotes 4.7 seconds to 100 km/h for the saloon; the magazine sport auto timed 5.1 at Hockenheim and judged it a car for fast long-distance stages on public roads rather than for lap times. Peak power arrives at 4,000–4,400 rpm, but most of the time you ride the 740 Nm from 2,000 rpm.

Part of the sound comes through the speakers. BMW said so at launch: the engine sound is "specifically enhanced to suit the driving situation at the time and sent into the interior via the audio system." In its long-term test, sport auto was no fan of synthetic engine sounds but found it better than the diesel clatter of old. Harris was less forgiving: in Sport Plus, it "sometimes sounds like a Corrado VR6 that's dropped a cylinder."

It is not frugal when you use it. BMW's official figure was 6.3 l/100 km for the saloon; sport auto ran an M550d Touring as a long-term test car through the 2013/14 season, covered 85,000 km and averaged 12.3 l/100 km — 9.7 at best, 18.7 at worst. Even driven gently it was hard to get under ten litres; flat out on the autobahn at night it stayed under twenty.

What that long-term car needed. At 40,428 km it showed a drive-fault warning and went into limp mode; BMW replaced the stage-one high-pressure turbocharger, because of a fault in the boost actuator, and the EGR valve with it. At 57,748 km it went back for a new EGR cooler, logged as "BMW Puma-Maßnahme Nr. 52134200-09" — a numbered BMW measure. Both, the magazine wrote, were fixed as goodwill, and apart from those two engine problems the season was almost fault-free. That is one car, not a statistic — but it is the fullest record of a year with an M550d we have found.

In the snow, it does what it was built for. Car Enthusiast reported that M division's people admitted it was built "specifically with a typical customer in mind - wealthy skiers." One of sport auto's testers wrote in the logbook that in the mountains you hardly notice how big a car you are driving.

What it gives back. A six-cylinder diesel with three turbos, 740 Nm and four-wheel drive, and room for a week away. 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.

Eight 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. Sixteen things that are simply nine to fourteen 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 BMW's own bulletin says about the edges of the aluminium doors, which cars it covers, and what is documented about water — and what is not. What the eight-speed gearbox, the transfer case and its actuator, and Performance Control each mean for a buyer — and why this car has no rear-wheel steering, whatever the advert says. 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 — seventy-eight 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

9 · Clicking from the front axle

Half a day · Cheap part, difficult access — the wheel bearing comes out to be cleaned, not replaced

BMW bulletin SI B31 01 12 covers the F10, and BMW was still revising it in 2020: "Cracking noises are heard from the front axle area while maneuvering at low speeds (e.g., parking lot maneuvers) or when turning the steering wheel while stationary." The cause: "Movement between the contact surfaces of the wheel bearing and swivel bearing (knuckle)". The procedure removes the wheel bearing and uses repair kit "83 19 2 298 825 to clean up the mating surfaces". The parts list is that repair kit, not a wheel bearing. Before anybody quotes a wheel bearing or a control arm for a click at parking speed, show them this bulletin.

Leave it if it is quiet. Within a year or two for a click when manoeuvring or turning the wheel at a standstill — it is a noise, and the repair is a clean.

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

Replacing the timing chain is a week or more in the workshop. A turbocharger is two or three days. And 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 the sources disagree or stay silent — on the oil intervals, on the EGR campaign, on the engine code — it says so, with BMW's own documents first.
• 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.

← The full BMW M550d xDrive F10 / F11 guide