Buy this car or pass....

[GIBSON]

My sister-in-law bought this 545 new in 2004 (possibly 2005). She says it's cursed.
She went through run-flat tires about every time she'd fill it up with gas. Her son has been driving it but it's now parked in her garage. 118K miles. I'm not sure if it runs, it's really hard to get her to talk about it. Pretty depressing as she knows it's worth very little and the real sticker shock set in some time ago.

She hates to see someone in the family buy it because she feels, literally, it's cursed.
It needs help but it looks perfect. All receipts, everything is there. I have no idea of the codes it's thrown.. she can't even concentrate on it long enough to get that together. It's in SoCal, I'm in the Bay area, do I make an offer and try to get it
back to being a driver? If so, how much....3K? That might even be too much.
What's a safe offer... 2K? It seems I could part it out and do ok at that point.
Dealing with family and cars is probably a mistake.
Open to suggestions. Thanks

[Dmitry at Pelican Parts]

Hi Bruce - really sorry to hear that she's been having so many issues with it. I too thought my BMW was 'cursed' because I was getting a low tires pressure warnings somewhat often but was told that it's common in BMWs because of the soft rim compound and less than ideal street surfaces. A solid set of tires fixed this (run flats came off about a week after I got my car, not a fan at all) Get the codes read first and that should be the deciding factor as to invest or not. Just my 2 cents...best of luck!

[GIBSON]

Will do, the codes are everything. She's so frustrated with the car it's hard to get her to spend
any time on it. I get that but she needs to move on. I think about a year and a half in they
dumped the run-flats. At least she's somewhat realistic about value, I've seen running versions of this car in the 4-6K range, they seem to dump value about as fast as the 7 series cars do. Still, I'm tempted for some reason....

[Jerry S]

Some of these things apply to all 5 series cars, even the amazing E60 M5. Have you considered this car ?

The E60 has many good and bad things, have a look at this video as it outlnes some things that apply to all 5 series cars and everything for the M5.
https://youtu.be/7fA-Fbou2io