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How my dad and I ended up with a beautiful used BMW 330i after 6 years!

30th June 2024, 11:02 by Utkarsh Chaudhary

Between 2016 and 2020, we evaluated so many great cars like the BMW E90 320d, F30 320d Corporate Edition, R56 Mini Cooper S and even an Audi Q3.

BHPian db01 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

This thread is going to need quite a long backstory for it to make sense, so before I start rambling on about how my dad and I ended up with this beautiful car, here are my initial impressions of our family's newly acquired pre-owned F30 330i:

What I like about the car:

It is a piece of art! The M Performance body kit and the 19" 403M wheels give this car looks to die for
The B48 2.0 Turbocharged 4-cylinder, boy does she purr!!
252 HP of power and 350 Nm of torque on tap means it goes like a bat out of hell
The ZF8 gearbox is lightning-fast for a torque converter and competes with the DQ200. The gearbox is also far less clunky than the DSG in traffic, which is an added bonus
RWD! The car handles like it is stuck to the ground using some kind of black magic, and you can tell that the front wheels enjoy doing nothing but pointing the car in the right direction. This gave the 330i the most brownie points when evaluating if it was a worthy upgrade from the Octavia.
The colour! While hunting for a 3-series over the years, my dad and I were both on the same page that the F30 looks best in either Mediterranean Blue Metallic or Melbourne Red
The ride, even though the car is sitting on 19" wheels, seems to be more comfortable than our Octavia running on 17" wheels.
The sports seats are super comfy and support you in all the right places
The interior feels like a far sportier environment than in the Octavia

What I don't like about the car:

It needs some work. The rotors need changing, and the tires have seen better days. One of the panels also needs to be repainted, as someone has done a shoddy job of it in the past
The 19" wheels come with tires that have minuscule sidewalls, which makes it quite impractical for our roads. Besides, a set of tires will set you back the same amount of money we got for selling our 2005 Swift earlier in the year
NO KEYLESS ENTRY! After getting used to leaving my key in my pocket for the last couple of years, it is pretty comical when I reach the car with my hands full and need to perform some innovative balancing act to get the key out of my pocket and unlock the car
The car also doesn't come with Apple Carplay, which means I have to use my phone for Google Maps, which is not ideal
The beige interior. If this car had any other interior colour that BMW offered with the 330i sports line, it would have been an ideal spec. Something about a beige interior with the red accent colour just doesn't look right.
No front parking sensors. After getting used to these on the Octavia, I do miss them. Especially with the long bonnet on the 3
Boot space is not ideal. Especially if we plan on getting a space saver (the previous owner decided against it)
Since the first owner of the car didn't get the space saver, the car doesn't even have a jack and spanner in the boot, which is apparently an optional extra

The Backstory

My dad is an avid petrolhead and has been a lurker on Team BHP for as long as I can remember. Growing up, we always had some interesting cars in our garage, from a Zen built by Raj Hingorani, which was powered by a 1.3L engine from an Esteem, to taking delivery of one of the first Swifts in the country and getting a free-flow exhaust and a Cold Air Intake fitted on it within a week of taking delivery.

Our beloved 2005 Swift

Until around 2015, we would have different cars in our garage every six months, but things calmed down after that. At this point, our garage consisted of our beloved 2005 Swift and a 2009 Honda City AT.

Around 2016, my dad got the itch to buy something more premium and more powerful; it was his dream to own a BMW 3-series, so we began looking at used E90 320ds on the market, but the jump in finances from maintaining a Swift and a City to maintaining a beemer seemed a bit unreasonable. Still, with two petrolheads in the household, we continued looking for a fun car to bring home.

Between 2016 and 2020, we evaluated so many great cars:

(I wasn't old enough to drive until 2019, so my opinion of these cars is solely based on how cool I thought they would look in our garage and my experience sitting in the backseat during test drives)

E90 320d: The 3-series has always been a car my dad admired and dreamed of owning, and around 2016-17, our budget only permitted a 6-7 year-old E90. I wasn't very supportive of buying an E90 as it looked pretty dated compared to the F30.
R56 Mini Cooper S: In 2017, a close family friend was letting go of their R56 Cooper S, and this, in my 16-year-old mind, was the coolest thing we could buy as it was also running a stage 2 tune and had a full valvetronic Armytrix exhaust system with pops and bangs. However, it made no sense as a family car (even though it was just three of us), so we moved on and continued our hunt.
F30 320d Corporate Edition: There were a few F30 320d Corporate Edition cars that came up for sale, and they seemed like the ideal option as my dad was after a fun-to-drive car and not after all the bells and whistles. This also fits perfectly into our budget. But after seeing one in person, it just felt like it needed to be more premium to warrant the money we would have to invest.

Audi Q3: Just like the rest of the country, my dad was also bitten by the SUV bug after scraping our Honda City over all of Bangalore's unscientific speed bumps. However, after driving a Q3 from Bangalore to Wayanad, he wasn't a fan of the light steering and how it handled compared to a sedan.

Apart from these cars, which were serious contenders, my dad also toyed with the idea of buying a new Octavia VRS 230 or a Polo GTI but realised it was probably not the sensible thing to do.

In 2019, my dad gave up on the idea of buying a Beemer or a sporty equivalent and went ahead and booked a Kia Seltos. However, after test-driving all three powertrain options, my dad wasn't convinced that a new Seltos was worth the same amount of money as a used 3-series, so we cancelled the booking.

In 2020, we realised our city was starting to show its age, and one of my dad's friends was selling his 2017 Creta 1.6 diesel AT. So, after spending 3 years looking for a 3-series, my dad ended up buying a Creta, which, according to me, was by far the most boring car that has ever graced our garage. But this meant that the City would be my first car, which I was thrilled with. I often joke with my dad that most people buy sports cars during a mid-life crisis, but he bought a practical workhorse instead

The stop-gap workhorse

Fast forward to December 2022, I was on a semester abroad in the Netherlands and would spend the New Year with some friends in Italy. My parents must have been missing me as they gave me a 21st birthday gift to remember. I got to drive five laps around a small track near Milan in a Ferrari 458 Italia!!

An unforgettable experience

Immediately after that experience, I called my dad and uttered the infamous phrase, "Life is too short to drive boring cars!"

In April 2023, another one of Dad's friends was selling his Octavia 1.8 TSI, and we decided it was time to bring something fun back into the garage. So we bit the bullet and picked up the Octy. The plan was to keep this for the foreseeable future and eventually fit a decat downpipe with a stage 2 tune.

Octy parked next to my Honda City

However, it was evident that my dad still had the itch to buy a 3 series as a week after picking up the Octy, we were back at Navnit Used Cars looking at a lovely Alpine White 320d M-Sport decked with carbon fibre and Alcantara on the interior. After taking the car for a test drive, we realised that the Octavia was nearly as capable in terms of performance, but the 320d had far superior handling. At less than half the price, it became evident that the Octy provided the best bang for the buck. We went ahead with plans to keep the Octavia. We fitted 17" Lenso Jager Ventus alloys on 225/45/17 Continental CSC5 tires and spent a fair amount of money bringing the car into immaculate shape with plans to keep it for the next few years.

However, life loves to throw curveballs at you when you least expect them, and so does the used car market. In November 2023, my dad sent me a flurry of images of a beautiful 330i Sports line that had come up for sale. It was fitted with an M Performance kit and 19" 403M Wheels that had been imported from the US. After driving the 320d M-Sport earlier, we weren't convinced this would be a worthy upgrade but decided to see it anyway. After a short test drive, my dad and I were smiling from ear to ear. We were both sold; this thing was a hoot to drive. We agreed on a price with the seller, paid an advance within the next twenty minutes, and agreed to take the car for a check-up to Carmed the following day.

The check-up at Carmed revealed that the rotors needed changing, but nothing to deter us from picking up the car. So, after hunting for a 320d for around six years, we ended up with its less practical, more exhilarating twin.