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This is prompted by seeing an ad for a 200,000-mile plus BMW from the late `90s. Most retrospective reviews on V12 engines of earlier decades state they are wonderfully smooth, powerful, adrenalin-producing (insert your own cliché) but then add that they are horrendously expensive to maintain and give the general impression that they suddenly become hugely temperamental and unaffordable after very few years. Leaving fuel costs aside because no one expects a V12 to sip petrol, are the Mercedes/BMW/Jaguar V12s really so much more expensive to run at 10-15 years or more old than a big European or Japanese V8 of the same vintage? The horror effect among acquaintances of admiring a well-engineered `90s Mercedes 600 is much greater than that of lusting after a Bentley Mulsanne valued by the trade at much more. Why? Two hundred thousand miles for a 1997 BMW V12 suggests a pretty sound motor to me.
Edited by Harmattan on 29/01/2010 at 13:38
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well in the case of the XJS V12 it is a great car
but expensive to maintain, as much as anything because the engine takes up the entire engine bay and there is very little room to do any work in there, pushing up mantime needed for jobs, and number of jobs needing the engine to come out
then there are the complexities of that asbestos bulkhead there to stop the engine heat melting the steel of the footwell - I kid you not, and so, the elf and saftey rules and regs of disturbing the asbestos would make any work in that area very expensive if done according to the rules
and so on
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I guess installation complexity comes into it. Not that the engine is inherently more likely to give any trouble, but looking under the bonnet of a V12 Jag, for all its magnificence, gives me the willies at the thought of having to do anything with it. This means professional labour for most things, and this means additional costs.
And it's hard to ignore the fuel cost issue at £1.13 a litre (and rising).
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the engine takes up the entire engine bay and there is very little room to do any work
I have sometimes wondered why engines are not made easily removable as a unit (like some tank propulsion units are).
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I have sometimes wondered why engines are not made easily removable as a unit (like some tank propulsion units are).
Something the old air cooled VWs had spot on.
Me and my dad had the engine out of his Type 2 camper, for the first time, in 40 minutes. Couldn't believe how simple it was! OK, air-cooled helps, but still. :-)
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Hard to beat the Lexus LS400's V8 for longevity it would appear.
V12s in general will be sensitive to regular servicing with more oilways and waterways to get gunged up if not looked after.
As always at the 10-15yr age, *condition* is everything.
Masses of receipts/servicing doesn't mean a car is good. It may mean an obsessive owner, or an unreliable car.
Condition, condition, condition!
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Sod the complexity, stuff the costs. Just buy it and annoy the beardy treehuggers before cars like this are banned for good!
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I worked at Jag years ago, I loved watching the XJS track producing the cars, and watching the V12 engines being built at Radford
the folk working on production of the engines were genuine craftsmen, and was great fun watching them
the woodshop was also pretty unique in British industry in the sheer quality of work they turned out, and the leather shop similar
whole place was let down by poor management, and old facilities
and the stuff like watching some VIP cars having invalid option combinations done
and of course some models went to the dealers with both Jag and Daimler badges in the boot, and the corresponding badge was stuck on according to what they sold, thats right for a number of years there were overlapping cars which could be bought with either Jag or Daimler badge on, only difference being significantly higher price for the daimler badge
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Is a V12 more expensive to run than a comparable V8? Yes, almost certainly.
Is it more likely to be unreliable? Possibly.
Just think about, going from V8 to V12 you gain 4 more pistons, at least 8 more valves, longer crank and cam shafts... Lots more of just about everything to go wrong.
However, if thoughts like that bother you then you'd buy a 4 pot rep-mobile instead.
Go for it I say! There is no overall driving experience that will ever compare to a well-looked after V12, IMHO. I would buy one myself, but convincing SWMBO that a 3.0 V6 was reasonable was hard enough... :)
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>Sod the complexity, stuff the costs. Just buy it and annoy the beardy treehuggers before cars like this are banned for good! <
Yup, that's pretty much why we bought ours.
We've owned it eight months and done 2.5k enjoyable miles - once I stopped going cross-eyed staring at the temperature gauge. And it will return more than 20mpg without being driven hyper-sensitively. My pal the Jaguar engineer always told me not to be afraid of the V12, just to expect to pay more for everything because there's more of everything. Apparently, late engines like ours were 'Ford-ised', using more modern materials, etc, in an effort to cure some of the well-known weaknesses.
Anyway, we decided that if the exercise went wrong we could afford to lose what we put into it, so heigh-ho - if it all goes pear-shaped I'll always remember the sound and the experience, and smile.
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Great fun to drive I should imagine, but imagine changing the spark plugs. ;>)
I used to moan to myself about the extra ones when I had a 'six'.
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but imagine changing the spark plugs. ;>)
That's a good point on the OPs e38 750i, two of the spark plugs are tucked away under other bits and bobs, i understand these can be neglected by main dealers.
E38's are much cheaper to run than i expected, and i use original parts, at least 50% bought over the BMW dealer's parts desk.
Although price matched:
euro car parts for lemforder control arms
GSF for sachs / boge shocks
GSF for brembo brake discs -- BMW can't match the price here, they're £3 over for each disc, that extra £3 gets you 24 month warranty & the discs in the BMW box have been for another round of spin balancing that the discs in the red brembo box haven't.
GSF for Textar brake pads (although i've now switched to PAGID)
Info might be useful to someone taking on an e38...
I can't recommend the car enough. I suspect if i'd bought a jag i'd say the same about that though.
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Years ago I had a Daimler Double Six. mechanically it was very reliable as the engine is so under-stressed, the Jag V12 will happily rev to 8500rpm in standard form, the redline was artificially low because there was no torque converter in the world capable of being spun so fast. Servicing took much longer, but other than that I had no mechanical problems at all with the engine - shame about the electrics and the gearbox which did give me trouble. It was so cool flicking over to the other fuel tank when you ran low on fuel. :-) IMHO this was the best engine in the world for nearly 3 decades.
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V12 engines - beyond the common motorist? Only the rolls royce merlin.!
Now thats V12 id like in front of me!
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I would have thought 200,000 miles for a BMW V12 is nothing. Its such an unstressed unit. As for the complexity, yes, there is more of everything, but how often do valve springs break, camshafts go, conrods snap? I would have thought keeping on top of the cooling system was more of an issue, as there is a lot of heat to dissipate.
I think that the BMW V12 actually has two MAF's, one for each side of the engine so that if one goes wrong the ECU puts the car into 'limp home' and runs on the other bank of cylinders. That could be expensive to sort out.
The Jaguar V12 was actually a better unit than the XK 6 cylinder unit, suffering no head gasket issues or chain/tensioner problems, although harder to work on, as there is so much gubbins on top of the engine, quite daunting.
As a school kid, I saw some nutter drive past in an XJ12 with his foot to the floor, driving down this undulating road. It was backfiring and smoking, but the sight of all that weight shifting that quickly with no more than a subdued roar was fascinating.
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I want one now you bad people.
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Get one! Nowt like a V12 on full chat.
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I've seen 2 V12's stripped out on my indy's bench, both suffering severe black death.
V8's got to be the sensible way to brute power, Americans would have gone V12 if it worked, but they stayed true to V8's for generations.
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I thought that was more down to packaging and cost reasons more than anything?
It's not like a V12 can be stuffed under the bonnet of any car, even the huge things Yanks drive!
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And cost as well as good old fashion distrust of anything new - a lot of people in the US shied away from OHC engines for years. I guess what's the point of "fancy" valve gear when the engine doesn't rev much anyway!
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TOB and SL, you're probably right about cost, but maybe the Americans have a good common sense outlook...if it ain't broke etc, i don't buy the lack of room idea.
If it is down to cost then that answers the OP and V12's are beyond the pocket of common motorist.
Edit the black death engines were MB's by the way.
Edited by gordonbennet on 29/01/2010 at 16:48
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Well, I guess V8s are a good compromise, cheaper to build and maintain than a V12, with 80% of the same experience.
Size does matter though! Most American cars are now FWD. You can just squeeze a V8 into a transverse setting, but try doing that with a V12!!
Although, to be fair I don't think V12s were popular over there even when they had RWD and huge long bonnets either.
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Black death is frequent across all BMW engine formats, from 4 pots to 12 pots :-(
Check under the oil filler cap -- peering into the rocker cover -- before buying, because there doesn't seem to be an agreed way to fix it other than stripping the engine down & cleaning it out.
Edited by CraigP on 29/01/2010 at 16:44
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Many thanks for these constructive and informative comments. I do confess to having impure thoughts about V12s of a certain age although I am offsetting this by subscribing to a newsletter on one of the upcoming electric jobbies. What bothers me is that we may soon lose the opportunity to enjoy such dinosaurs to the full through taxation, fuel and servicing costs as well as loss of the fettling expertise to keep older supercars going. I don't really want to be silently and ecologically motoring in the future but in practical terms not venturing more than 25 miles from home without having experienced the joy of the open road behind a full-on V12 engine. I was hoping to tease out some thoughts on the Mercedes V12 as the ultimate affordable expression for me might be a SL600. Even a Mercedes specialist, who didn't have any for sale admittedly, warned me off any V12 Merc on grounds of complexity. I think ultimately it boils down to being prepared to write-off the purchase price of such a beast!
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Well if all the rumours that Mercedes Benz are to stop making V12s are true you could end up with an appreciating classic, just don't buy a post 97ish car when the accountants got the upper hand and Mercs started rusting like old Fiats.
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Ah memories
In the old days XJS would be road tested on that tiny bit of dual carriageway with a 70 limit between browns lane and towards Cov centre (I think thats the only reason its a 70 was to allow such road tests) and one of the standard Jag company pool cars was an MG Maestro, consequently much fun was had in MG Maestro v V12 XJS drivebys along that road
I remember being in a V12 XJS on the coventry ring road when some young tearaway tried to race us in a Pug 205 GTI, and it was one of the funniest things in the world to see the affect of a blip on the V12 accelerator leave him for dust
The joys of youth eh
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I once drove a '92 600SL, 408bhp, wonderfully smooth, great fun with the TC off, shortly after they became SL600s and had no full throttle accelerator pumps for emissions reasons and they went down to 386bhp as I recall.
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>>they went down to 386bhp as I recall
Wow! A loss of a whole 20bhp.
I think I've driven cars with less than that loss. ;>)
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Original 2CV and Fiat 500 come to mind....
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