Thanks for the kind words, guys. Since I owned a very similar 2008 back in the day, I would consider myself a motivated purchaser....I knew what I wanted and was willing to pay pretty much top dollar for a nice example when the opportunity presented itself. This showed up on Kijiji over the weekend and I pounced on it as soon as I got the alert. I ended up paying $16k, after having it checked it out by my indy. When I told him I was bringing in a 1-Series, his first reaction was "I hope it's not a 135". I've been active on the various BMW forums long enough to know they can be ticking time bombs and I don't need the stress/worry. There is not much to go wrong here with the N52 being such a known quantity....the water pump and thermostat should be done proactively at some point, but at the rate I drive that is years down the road.
The real unicorn for a BMW enthusiast is a low mileage 128i with the Sport package and a 6-speed, like these:
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2010-bmw-128i-6-speed-manual/https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2012-bmw-128i-6-speed-manual/For me, I needed/wanted an auto, which also makes the Sport package tough to find. I've lived with the non-Sport seats for about 250,000km across two BMWs and I was always pretty happy with them.
At the end of the day, there are always a couple of these for sale in the Maritimes for $8 to $10k, but normally with 150,000km+ and no history. This car was obviously more expensive but the price difference bought me a lot of what should be trouble-free driving.
