My wife believes it is time to update/upgrade our e46 wagon. For reference, its a 2003, we got it back in 2014 and it has served us well. My two daughters learned to drive on it, used it through their college years, it has served as our snow mobile and general beater. It currently has about 147k on it.
Over the weekend something hung up on it while my wife was driving it to get our daughter, who lives in downtown Philly. It pulled to the left and was shaking pretty badly. She had to pull over on I76 near Philly (super busy, kind of sketchy, not a good place for a woman alone on the side of the road). I think it may have just been a sticking brake caliper, but in any case it freaked her out and she has decided it is time for it to move on and us to have a more reliable beater. The issue went away sometime after she pulled over and hasn't come back since.
Some searching found this out in Pittsburgh (for those that don't want to click the link, its an '07 e90 n52 xit wagon w/ 60k miles).
https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-...ckType=listing
I am ambivalent to the swap. It looks like the e90 is a good deal. I pulled the carfax and it is super clean with a very good maintenance history. We will give our philly daughter the option of having the e46 for free if she takes over insurance. If that worked out, she'd keep it for a year (I'd still wrench on it to keep it running), then it would move to my son who will be 16.5 yrs old next summer. If she doesn't want to pay for insurance, I'm not sure what the next step would be for it.
Does anyone see any downsides (beside the e46 is a more fun car than the e90)? Anything I should know about n52s vs m54s?
On the one hand, the e46 is death by 1000 paper cuts in that it seems like something is always naggingly wrong. On the other, I spent a decent amount of time on it lately, and it seems to be running better than ever. I've put a couple hundred miles on it since my wife had the issue and have felt nothing wrong.