May be becomming a 1st time BMW owner

[2much2soon]

A friend of mine owns an independent BMW repair shop. He has an '04 540i, 6 speed model that he is showing for a bank in his showroom.

A bank (local credit union, actually) repo'd the car and is accepting bids from buyers.

The car has 90k miles on it. My friend has done a brake job and put it in a new clutch on the car since getting the car in.

He told me that, in his opinion, the car needs another roughly 3k put into it to be in near perfect condition. This 3k would include some paint work on the front clip to repair some slight bubbles, and a new AC compressor. The AC compressor makes a noise when the clutch is depressed but otherwise works fine.

I am going back to test drive the car this week. It appears to be in very good cosmetic condition other than the front clip paint bubbles. The interior is very nice.

The only thing that caught my attention while sitting in the car was that the shifter throws seemed very long and the shifter felt pretty sloppy in general.

Is that normal for this 6 speed manual transmission, at 90k miles? Is it an indication of anything, like being driven pretty hard?

I haven't actually driven a BMW of any kind before so this is all new to me.

Thanks for any help...

[witeshark]

I'd say in the least case that seems like a hard driven car.

[denyo77]

my shifter is neither long nor sloppy
it's actually a bit too tight

then again I have the short shifter arm from the Z4 3.0si

[brettski]

Welcome to the Werkz

See if your mate will offer you any form of warranty.