BMW 5 Series Saloon, E60
A big saloon with an E90's engines and a sharper chassis than the size suggests. It drives well and it ages expensively, because everything on it's electronic.
Overview
The E60 is the sedan BMW 5 Series, built 2003–2010 and facelifted in 2007. 8 standard engines are documented here, each with its own issue list, inspection sequence and price band. Asking prices across the standard range run €2,800–€13,650, and 2 of the 8 carry a risk level of 4 or 5; the facelift cars sit at a premium over otherwise identical pre-facelift ones. The 525i M54 is both the cheapest way in, from €3,500, and the lowest-risk engine of the range, which makes it the obvious starting point. Prices are illustrative placeholders rather than a sourced market sample. See the methodology.
BMW 5 Series sedan (E60) · photo 2004-2007 BMW 525d (E60, 5-Series) saloon in Cyberjaya, Malaysia (01) by Aero777 · CC BY-SA 2.5 my · Wikimedia Commons
| Body style | sedan | Production | 2003–2010 |
| Platform siblings | E61 wagon | Facelift (LCI) | 2007 |
Engine matrix: pre-facelift, 2003–2006
The 5 variants sold before the 2007 facelift. Power and years come from the variant records; prices are illustrative, not sourced.
| Badge↕ | Engine | Fuel | Years↕ | Power↑ | Torque↕ | Risk↕ | Issues | Price band↕ | Good buy↕ | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 520d | M47 | diesel | 2005–2006 | 163 PS | 340 Nm | R2 | 8 | €3,200–€7,000 | €4,000 | Buy |
| 525i | M54 | petrol | 2003–2005 | 192 PS | 245 Nm | R2 | 8 | €2,800–€6,200 | €3,500 | Buy w/ conditions |
| 525d | M57 | diesel | 2004–2006 | 197 PS | 400 Nm | R2 | 10 | €4,000–€9,500 | €5,100 | Strong buy |
| 530d | M57 | diesel | 2003–2006 | 235 PS | 500 Nm | R2 | 10 | €5,000–€12,500 | €6,400 | Strong buy |
| 530i | N52 | petrol | 2005–2006 | 258 PS | 300 Nm | R2 | 10 | €4,200–€10,000 | €5,350 | Buy |
Engine matrix: facelift / LCI, 2007–2010
The 7 variants sold from the facelift on, priced at a 9% premium over the pre-facelift car.
7 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.
| Badge↕ | Engine | Fuel | Years↕ | Power↑ | Torque↕ | Risk↕ | Issues | Price band↕ | Good buy↕ | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 520d | M47 | diesel | 2007–2007 | 163 PS | 340 Nm | R2 | 8 | €3,500–€7,650 | €4,400 | Buy |
| 520d | N47 | diesel | 2007–2010 | 177 PS | 350 Nm | R4 | 10 | €4,900–€10,900 | €6,150 | Caution |
| 523i | N53 | petrol | 2007–2010 | 190 PS | 270 Nm | R3 | 11 | €3,900–€9,250 | €4,950 | Buy w/ conditions |
| 525d | M57 | diesel | 2007–2010 | 197 PS | 400 Nm | R2 | 10 | €4,350–€10,350 | €5,550 | Strong buy |
| 530d | M57 | diesel | 2007–2010 | 235 PS | 500 Nm | R2 | 10 | €5,450–€13,650 | €7,000 | Strong buy |
| 530i | N52 | petrol | 2007–2010 | 258 PS | 300 Nm | R2 | 10 | €4,600–€10,900 | €5,850 | Buy |
| 535i | N54 | petrol | 2007–2010 | 306 PS | 400 Nm | R4 | 12 | €5,450–€13,100 | €6,850 | Caution |
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 →
Model-year availability
Which engines were on sale in which year, from the year ranges in the variant records. Availability varied by country.
Rating map, price against risk
Good-buy price plotted against risk level for every standard engine, so the value corner is visible at a glance.
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.
Prices across the range
Where the money sits across the whole chassis. Every figure here is an illustrative placeholder, not a sourced market sample.
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.
Every standard engine · cheapest first · 525d M57 highlighted as best value
at or under the good buy · good buy · median · bar spans the 10th–90th percentile
Chassis-wide issues, every engine inherits these
Faults recorded against the bodyshell and running gear rather than one engine, so every variant on this page inherits them.
Written once against the chassis and shown on every variant page below, so nothing here is repeated 8 times: M cars included, since the bodyshell and electronics are shared.
Buying summary
Our read on the chassis, built on the records above rather than added to them.
Best value: 530d. The M57 is the best engine here by a wide margin, and in a car this heavy the torque matters more than it does in a 3 Series. Best long-term petrol: 530i N52, which has no high-pressure fuel system to fail. Avoid the 520d if the chain history is missing, because the N47 fault applies exactly as it does elsewhere. The trap is the electronics. Active steering, iDrive and the comfort-access modules all fail on cars this age, and a cheap E60 is usually cheap because several of them already have.
Cheapest and dearest in this chassis
The ends of the range by good-buy price. Useful for sanity-checking anything you're quoted.