BMW 1 Series 5-door, E87

13 variants from the facelift on, carrying a real market premium of roughly 9% over an otherwise identical pre-facelift car. Variants appearing in both tables were sold either side of the changeover, the build month decides which one you're looking at, not the model year.

Market availability varied by country; check the engine code stamped on the block rather than the badge on the boot. · Compare every engine side by side →

● full year · ◐ arrives or leaves mid-generation. Years from 2007 in the accent colour are facelift (LCI) cars. Verify the engine code, not the model year.

Every standard engine in the chassis, plotted at its good-buy price against its risk level. Cheap and low-risk is the top-left; expensive and fragile is the bottom-right. M cars are excluded, they would stretch the price axis and tell you nothing about the rest.

Every standard engine on one euro axis: the bar spans the 10th to 90th percentile of asking prices, the tick is the median and the green marker is the good-buy figure. M cars are excluded; they sit an order of magnitude above the rest.

Written once against the chassis and shown on every variant page below, so nothing here is repeated 13 times: M cars included, since the bodyshell and electronics are shared.

Best all-rounder: 120d N47 for the torque and economy, but only with documented timing-chain work. The rear chain is the fault that writes these engines off. Best long-term petrol. A six. The 130i N52 is the enthusiast's pick and the 118i/120i N46 are the low-stress fours; both dodge the piezo-injector bills of the N43. Watch the wet footwell: blocked scuttle drains soak the carpet and eventually the footwell module. Facelift four-cylinder cars use electric steering. Cheaper to buy, but the column motor is a known failure the six-cylinder cars never had.