The BMW is a 2.5 litre, I tried it today, the throttle is very precise and the cluth as well, the engine sounds very good, I just love the inline 6 music. The problem of the BMW is that I will have to take the swirl flaps off, I heard that the flaps are steel made and have 2 bolts attached, those bolts may come out with vibration and may be swallowed by the cylinder, that will damage the piston and the head. I just came for the view of the BMW, it is overall in good condition, however, the front tyres are complety worn, I will certainly have to replace them for my safety and for safety of other drivers even if it has passed the MOT, the rear tyres have about 25% of the thread so they will have to be replaced within 6 months as well. The road tax is out of date, one of the windshield pilars has a small corrosive hole on the paint that is filled with rust and it has a tendency to spread out, all of these are critical things that I will have to repair if I buy the car. In the interior it has a cracked gear stick, and some plastic parts missing from the cupholders of the passenger side. The car price is £6000, should I negotiate it and go for £5500 , maybe £5000?

About the Mazda, I should have a view tomorrow and I will post the feedback.

Just came from the Mazda view, I just loved driving it, the gearbox is very precise with short movements, onboard environment is quiet, engine is punchy, and overall is a very comfortable car even with the18" alloys. Now the ngative side: the seats are leather but they are light brown, so we can notice every little scratch on it, the windshield is damaged in the exterior with a small crack, however I can not feel the crack if I pass my fingertip on the inner layer of glass, I can feel it only on the outside. The paint has some minor scratches that are low profile. In the engine compartment, there is a rusty clamp at the intake pipe and air filter box and a few parts with corrosion, nothing serious, the engine sounds healthy, however after 20 minutes it started to judder because these damn dealers leave only 1 litre of fuel in the tank. Overall is does not seem a car with 130k miles on it. I noticed that the pedals rubber cover were not worn at all, so that means the car did mostly motorway trips and not much daily commuting. The clutch is smooth and does not slip. The car has some great features, it is the SL version with 4 doors, very rare, but it has xenon headlights, dual zone air con, heated seats, electrical seat adjustment with memory, push start button, ipod/mp3 external connection and bose speakers, the remotes condition were like new as well. The 4 tyres are in good condition, like 75% of the thread.

Now the important thing: About the timing chain I will have to check on a mazda dealer through their digital service, because the service is recorded digitally, the car was leased before, so I believe that it was a business vehicle, that explains the long mileage.

This mazda is £5000 and not £6000 like I said.

What do you think?

I have the service history here, but it does not describe any details and the mazda guy told me that he would not be able to know if the chain was stretched or not, but he told me that the car attended all the campaigns, so I should assume that the chain problem was solved.

The guy printed the service sheet, however it only describes dates, mileage, whether the service was completed or not ,MOT, and the repairer name and address, the last service was at 11/2012 with odometer reading 120700, but it only says "MOT", no service has been done. The next scheduled service should have been made at 01/2013 or 125500 miles, no service was made until now, so the car is running 16k miles without any service.

I pretend to do 9000 miles per year, including vacation at Spain in the summer, but I would like to upgrade for the estate version within a year, and I believe that it's going to be hard to resell this car if I buy it, unless I sell it for like £2000. I guess I'll stay out of it, and wait a few weeks/months for a version with less miles.

Other thing that I noticed is that the 2008 and 2009 SL and Sport versions have dual exhaust and from 2010 they have single exhaust, does anybody know if there is any reason for that?