BMW E46 318i Exceutive Sedan (Auto)

When you hop into a BMW and start driving all this epic revelationary classical music starts in your head. A choir of Angels sing you on your journey. It is like driving in heaven. A BMW feels right, looks amazing especially with options such as leather and wood grain and a sunroof) and smell good. It is true, all BMW's with leather smell fabulous. But it is the amazing handling which won me over, Ooh I am get little shiver just thinking about driving my old BMW 318i.

They have a little 1.9l engine which has as much power as you need (87Kw@5500RPM feels more in this car) and has official figures of  7.0l/100km. That is exceptional for anything, let alone something so great to drive. 

Unfortunately it was hard to know what our fuel economy was like as the car had a nasty habit of not really reading the fuel when it dropped below half so you could be driving a long merrily with aforementioned heavenly chorus and 1/3 tank showing on the gauge and then bang. dead stop. No fuel. This happened several times and luckily we were still in civilisation as it would be nasty to have happen on a long drive. There were also a variety of intermittent warning lights and a funny thing where the car wouldn't let you have your key back out of the ignition. It only happened a couple of times as well but apparently it can result in having to replace your whole ignition whatsit at a cost of several thousand dollars. These happenings, combined with the fact that it is a pretty low car (with great handling!) which made getting bubbies into and out of seats awkward meant that the lovely BMW was moved on from our family to a very fat young man of 18 who was going to put massive chrome wheels on it and try to get laid. If you want my opinion, it was going to take an awful lot more than a pimped up BMW to get that guy some action.

Overall:Beautiful, a dream to drive. Rather low to the ground.

Rating:8/10

Value:8/10:You can get a lot of car for the money but make sure you buy a low mileage example or some odd trademark teutonic repair costs will be yours.

Fuel economy:9/10 Very very good- a small engine but power feels fine for a family car.

Style:9/10:Lovely lovely. Probably my favourite era of BMW. Make sure you get leather and woodgrain trim options