2006 525 XI, what a Lemon!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Sport package makes it fun to drive on back roads.

Cons: Too darn complex for it's own good! Buy a BMW, never again!

The Bottom Line: 
This car is too much money and too much technology. After all the problems with this car we don't trust it to drive it more than 100 miles from home!

Author's Review
I made the mistake of trading out of an Audi Allroad for this "all wheel drive" 525 XI, hoping to get better fuel mileage with the smaller 6 cylinder engine. Since September this car has been in the shop nearly as long as we've had it to drive! Sure, it's a great drive when everythings working properly but whenever there's a problem we've had to send it to the dealership 3 to 4 time to get it fixed!

The current, month long repair, was to fix noisy lifters! Took 3 trips to the dealer before they could confirm the noise, then replace all the lifters and they STILL rattle. Finally BMW authorizes a complete cylinder head which DOES fix the noise but now the dealer is trying (for 2 days now) to get the cars computers re-programmed! They claim this is typical, that the programming is directly from BMW and NEVER goes right the first few times!

This at less than 6,000 miles! Thank god the dealer picks up and delivers, it's 200 miles round trip to the shop.

We've got a 2002 X5 w/4.4 liter engine and it's nearly flawless, tempting us to try this 2006 525 XI. Big mistake!