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Notes -
For those of your following along at home, I never wound up buying myself a car. Originally I wanted to buy a new car for my wife, but she initially didn't really like the things she wanted to replace her Lexus Rx with, and wanted to keep it, so I considered buying myself a car to add something to the family fleet that wasn't approaching old age. But then her parents wanted her car, and we wanted to give it to them, so I bought her a car instead. After looking at things like the Subaru Outback, Crosstrek, Toyota Crown, etc she ultimately fell in love with the BMW 330xi. Which actually gets great marks on ConsumerReports for major reliability, and we were able to get a very low mileage lease return at the local dealer, a couple years old but in perfect condition. It's a tremendously fun car to drive for how practical it is, gets 40mpg on highway trips, and my wife loves it which is the most important thing. It's so easy to get a lot out of it, that it's turning her into more of a car enthusiast, which I love, she's taking backroads home to get to whip it around corners a bit.
And personally, I like the car a lot too, so if inshallah in a few years our kid situation is such that she wants to move to something bigger, I would have no objection whatever to driving it daily, it has a future in the family even if she moves on. Which is why i was looking at buying a car to begin with, to have one in the bank in case EVs get weird for a few years. I wish it was manual and had less complex computerization, but the paddles have come a long way so I'll live with it.
Didn't they stop making these in 2006?
No? I think my nomenclature was off though, it's 330i with xdrive, it used to be xi instead. The 30 stopped meaning a 3.0 a while ago though, it's 2.0 liter turbo mild hybrid.
Ah, okay. The 330xi seems to be a model of years past.
https://www.carfax.com/Used-BMW-3-Series-330xi_t1477
It's really just a model nomenclature, a 3er with a 3.0 liter engine and x drive used to be 330xi.
Now a car with x drive isn't in the model name, and the number is just ordinal 20<30<40 in power but not related directly to size.
It's still a 3er with appropriate power and all wheel drive, which is the core concept.
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