I just bought mine in Nov. of 2007 after my '98 BMW 328iS got front ended at an intersection, the lady decided to try and turn in front of me when I was going 60 mph and i just smacked right into her. She was in a 2008 toyota minivan, and I gotta say my lil sports couple bimmer just crushed her van :P she went spinning and stopped maybe 100 feet back from the intersection.
I walked away with a sore neck, big deal. Long story short, they gave me $6k to buy a new car with. I spent 1500 down on my base model 05 and it was a 12k price tag with 13k miles when i bought it !
I love it, I too drive all year round, I think we are some of the only people that do. I ended up buying a second set of rims/tires (17 inch by 7 inch all around) with straight winter Blizzak's on them.
That combined with 100 pounds of plate weights in the trunk, I was plowing my way easily through 7 + inches of snow, and was going up hills passing pickups who were stuck, I love it !! :P
This car has sex appeal but i think the base model seats are a bit un comfy after awhile. One of the things that I am going to upgrade first after i've had the car for a bit, is upgraded seats... base model seats are pretty bad if you drive for more than 20 minutes at a time.
I have been in limited models and they are much more comfy, but for the price I paid with the mileage it had... I couldn't see myself spending $15k on a limited with 45k miles on it when I could get a basically brand new base model with only visual differences for the most part.
I am just about to put the summer tires back on, whoever owned it up until when i bought evidently never rotated the tires unfortunately
The inside of the tires were almost 100% worn down, whereas the outsides were almost brand new looking. So I am going to rotate them and put the good side in, and put maybe 1k more miles on them and buy me some very nice ultra high performance all seasons.
I plan on owning this car for a very long time, so I am going to extend the warranty when it comes due (June 30 of this year, 2008) Maybe a bit beforehand, but I just want to make sure I have bumper to bumper ocverage because I don't have the time anymore to work on cars as much as I used to when I was in college (just graduated like 2 weeks ago).
I used to do all the work on my car except major mechanical like rebuilding a tranny or cyl. head :P Anyways, thanks for giving me this thread to talk about my car ! I am alost fairly new to the forum.
-Chris