BMW 3 series maintenance costs

[melissaneedsabmw]

I really want a BMW 3 series, but my husband warned me that the maintenance costs might be very expensive. I tried looking them up on some websites, but could not find anything specific. Could anyone give me an idea of how BMW maintenance costs compare to American cars?

Thanks

[piman]

The only major maintenance items I've had to do was replace my tires multiple times. I have a 2001 330i sports package and after ~50K miles, I've replaced two sets of rear, and 1 set of front tires.
If you don't drive hard, and if you have all season tires, I imagine you'd have even lesser maintenance than mine.
Other than that, I haven't encountered anything else that costs too much to fix. It's been a flawless experience!

[munson]

On a 325 1986
Just replaced Timming belt bought from dealer 40$
Brakes all 4 wheels Pads and rotors 125$ automotive store
Rotors are $28 compare to cavalier or ford $36 to $40
or nissan and toyota $58 to $64
Spark plugs=the same
Exhaust from catalitic converter to the end mufler and braket include 160$ automotive store
The very expansive thing is the labor cost from what they call authorised specialist.Hum!
Ex:cost for reseting service light,all you have to do is shorting two pins in a connector.
cost for replacing in dash mother board,all you have to do is replacing the two rechargable
batt. in it ect...
And by the way I don't see many 1986 with 400km of other kind on the road.
All prices canadian money.
Imagine if you pay with U.S.$.
drive the best.Driver a BMW.

[Celsdogg]

i doubt she is looking for an E30 like ours, so the maintenance costs are very different. The new E46 3's only need fluids and filters for the first 100k. as you get older, they maintenance increases. like i do not have the guts to attempt a timing belt replacement in my old 1991 E30, which needs to be done every 60k. but the new M54 engine does not need this like older bimmers. you should not have too many issues with maintenance in the new 3er, and the old theory is starting to become defunct, that is that euros take a lot in maintence costs.

[FUN2DRV 330 Ci]

Hi!

You can find some information if you go to Edmunds.com and look for the model that you are interested in. On the left hand side of the screen you will get the option to look at "what will it cost to maintain". In there you will see detailed information about maintenance costs, speacially the scheduled maintenance every 30K miles. I just had this done on my car under the free maintenance period and the invoiced was for $399, but this one is on BMW. These cars are high performance machines that require maintenance and proper care. If you have high performance tires, you should expect to have to replace them around 25K miles, etc.