Living with a 335D: Year One.

It’s been a year to the day since I was lucky enough to finally buy this car from a close friend, as a birthday present to myself no less. (Happy Birthday to me!)
I’d been warned in the past about buying cars from friends as issues with the car can potentially lead to issues with friendships. However, knowing the full history of the car, I was confident in my purchase and knew it was the right call.

So, a little history about the car:

It’s a 2007 E90 335D, which had 110,000 miles on the clock. I would be the third owner of the car, and though it’d been well looked after and had a very full service history, it was stolen from my friend just before Christmas 2014, but thankfully was found by police 3 days later with minimal bodywork damage and no mechanical damage whatsoever (according to BMW who did a full inspection on the car. Knowing this information didn’t put me off buying it, and actually allowed me to buy it from him for an absolute steal (pun intended).

Living with the car as a daily driver.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way. This car is seriously fast. The 3 litre straight-6 diesel engine is, to quote everyone’s favourite car show presenter, a tower of power. With the remap it’s running, on tap is 350bhp and around 650nm of torque, cutting the 0-62 time from the stock 6.0sec to under 5.0sec. I’ve never personally had it dyno’d or done an official speed run, but timed with an iPhone that was what it ran.

The most impressive thing about the way the car drives is definitely the torque figure. I’ve never been in a car that pushes down the road in such an effortless manner; an E92 M3, a friend’s heavily modified Golf and even my friend’s brand new 335D (the same friend I bought this car from) just don’t match it. Off the line, the M3 and new 335D leave it behind due to less weight and more BHP, and 4WD respectively, but as we recently found out when rolling at about 60, I can pulling away from my car’s younger twin surprisingly well.

One big weak spot of this car, and my main gripe with it, is the gearbox. As a 6-speed single clutch auto with paddleshift, it’s never going to set the world on fire, but I’ve never been in such a fast car with such dreadful response time on a gear shift. Under full acceleration, when hitting the upshift you need to change at an indicated 3500rpm and by the time the car shifts gear, you’re nudging 5000rpm. This is something I’ve grown used to over time, but it does make launching it fairly frustrating.

The same issue happens with the auto-kickdown; for anyone who doesn’t know, if you put the throttle to the floor, the car will automatically kick down to 2 or 3 gears depending on your current speed. The lag on this is almost unbearable; going for an overtake, it’s better to put it into manual mode and drop gears on the paddles, as letting the gearbox take care of it will take about a second. This doesn’t sound like much, but when you really need to put all the power down quickly, it feels like an eternity.

The boring-but-useful stuff.

The E90 generation is a fairly practical car; being able to ferry around 4 people in comfort, 5 with a bit of shoulder-to-shoulder action, makes this a great car for long road trips with a group, and with a very deep boot, it passes the nuclear warhead test that Top Gear pioneered years ago.

Fuel economy is something this car is surprisingly good at; on a long journey it’s able to manage 40-44 mpg comfortably, and 35mpg with a bit of spirited driving. The best I’ve ever managed over around 80-100 miles was 47.8mpg, something many 3 litre cars can’t even come close to.

Reliability has been pretty solid over the past year, and wear & tear has been very reasonable. In that time I’ve replaced the OSF spring after it self-destructed, and intend to replace the NSF soon, all 4 tyres, rear brake pads and wear sensors, and the windscreen because of several large chips and the fact you couldn’t see through it when in direct sunlight, which is somewhat dangerous…

It’s in the last month the car has finally started to show its age, mechanically speaking anyway. Recently when underneath it, I noticed a lot of oil residue on the skid plate, and on further inspection saw the charge air line (main pipe from turbos to intercooler) was leaking very slightly. Apparently this is a common fault, and over a long period of time the small amount of oil that ends up passing through there gets sprayed everywhere, and eventually coats the entire right side of the engine. A vacuum line somewhere has also split/disconnected as there is a definite boost-leak and a lot of noise under acceleration, and an oil line into the small turbo has failed, which is causing a slight oil leak there too.

All these issues are due to be fixed this Wednesday, but these are all apparently fairly common issues on this car, so if you’re in the market for a 335D, these are things to look out for.

Design

One element I love about this car are the twin symmetrical exhausts. Unlike the other diesel E90’s, and even the new 335D, the exhausts are much larger, and are either side of the car. This gives it a far more aggressive look from the back, and with the rear badge delete, is the only clue to the performance of the car when looking at it.

Up front, the stock grilles that came fitted were chromed, and in my opinion looked cheap and tacky. There is absolutely no chrome anywhere else on the car, so why these were the default option I have no idea. The first and only mod I’ve done to this car was swapping these out for matte black grilles which I think are a significant improvement. Comments?

One thing I’ve come to realise is the car has a real duality about it. It’s perfect for cruising to work in full-auto mode in great comfort most of the creature comforts you want; heated seats, a great sound-system with a connection for my phone, and very good sound insulation. However, flick the gear selector to the left, click the left paddle a couple of times and it slingshots you down the road accompanied by an uncharacteristic roar from a diesel engine that has most people wondering what’s under the bonnet!

Introduce it to a corner, and with DSC on it will stick to the road like glue at surprisingly high speeds. Turning DSC partially off makes putting its power down a little more tricky, though this massively improves its ability off the line. Turning DSC fully off is something I’ve only braved a handful of times, partly because I don’t want to wrap the car around the nearest lampost, and partly because I can’t afford to constantly replace the tyres that will inevitably be shredded when the sideways action begins. This car is an absolute monster with no driver aids switched on, and on the UK roads it’s an accident waiting to happen. When I eventually take it to a track however, I can’t wait to see how well it can slide in a safe environment.

TL;DR Summary.

Stuff I like:

• Unbelievable performance blended with great economy.
• Reliable, comfortable everyday cruiser that’s very capable in almost every capacity.
• Excellent build quality.
• Understated; generally doesn’t draw too much attention from other drivers/the police.

Stuff I don’t like:

• Sluggish gearbox.
• Cost of genuine parts; the replacement Charge Air Line was £200!
• Lack of rear-folding seats makes carrying large items almost impossible.

Final Thoughts

I’ve never owned a car that I like as much as this before. It does everything I want, and more. I think when it eventually comes to replace it, I’ll be hard-pressed to find a better, more capable all rounder.

Here’s to another great year!

This content was originally posted by a Car Throttle user on our Community platform and was not commissioned or created by the CT editorial team.