Bag A Bangin' BMW For £1k

Where would we be without depreciation?

It probably sucks if you buy a new car and its value halves in the first year, but for those who buy used, all sorts of tasty morsels of metal come into reach. That includes the 'Ultimate Driving Machine', in all its forms. A quick scan of the classifieds will tell you all you need to know - that for the price of a fancy TV, you can put a blue propeller on your drive.

And what would you prefer to be doing this Christmas, driving empty roads in your rear-wheel drive sports saloon, or watching the Queen's face in 50-inch high definition? Yeah, we thought so.

E30 3-Series

An E30 probably doesn't represent the best value here, but it might provide the best return. These old threes have pretty much hit the bottom of their depreciation curves, and retro cool is starting to push the prices up again. Some can be a bit tail-happy, but if you avoid crashing then you can almost certainly sell it for more than you paid a few years down the line. They're also desperately good looking...

E46 318i

The boggo Beemer may not be the last word in cool, but for a grand you can get a surprisingly nice example. It's the newest car here, has the best chance of holding a full service history, and although grannies in their Honda Jazz will out-accelerate you at the lights, it's still a tidy handler. Remove the 318 badge and nobody will know you're a cheapskate.

E36 Compact

Love or hate the styling, the Compact is an appealing car. They cost pennies to buy, for a start. The handling and interior is a quirky mix of the old E30, and the contemporary E36. Pick of the range is the 140bhp 318ti, in Sport trim - mini-M3 looks with 318i running costs, and still a laugh in the twisty bits.

E39 528i

Want to own the best car in the world? Well back in the day, a great many car hacks made a very good case for this car being just that. Firstly, it's a good-looker, in a restrained sort of way. The interior is comfortable and quiet. It out-handled anything in its class, out-rode them too, and has a creamy-smooth inline-6 providing the power. It'll do 30mpg, and it still looks expensive. Can you really ask for more?

E38 7-Series

Go on, we dare you. BMW's biggest for a bag of sand? Perfectly possible. Buy wisely - which probably means going for the straight-six 728i, rather than the V8 or V12 versions - and you've bagged a luxury limo which shouldn't cost much more than a 328i to run. It may be a bit visually tatty, but you won't see that when you're wafting down the motorway past all the plebs in their regular cars, will you?