Unsurprisingly this week we have a debut appearance for the gen-two E64 6 Series ragtop. It’s not surprising that it’s taken this long because when the E64 630i Convertible first appeared in 2004 it would have cost its first owner at least £50k, and even more than that three years later when the example you’re eyeing suspiciously here came off the line. Now it can be yours for a quid under two grand. How the mighty are fallen.
Where did it all go wrong for this one? Well, at first sight of the bodywork you might think that Biffa Bacon’s dad must have owned it at some point. There’s a lens missing on the offside front, the offside rear wing appears to be held on with gaffer tape, the absence of any interior pics is a bit puzzling, and who knows why the nearside exhaust tailpipe is sticking out at that angle. On top of all that, the MOT only has three months left to run.
But now let’s look at the good stuff. There’s plenty of it. The number on the odometer is low at 108,000. That checks out on the MOT history which shows us an average mileage of between 1,000 and 2,000 a year since 2011, suggesting that the bodywork damage might be down to Father Brown manoeuvring myopically around the vicarage rather than Fatha Bacon going in for a spot of high-speed touch parking in a crowded supermarket car park. Last October’s test did note light misting on the rear shocks and repeated a non-excessive oil leak that had first appeared in Oct ’22, but generally speaking in terms of advisories there’s been nothing much worse than worn tyres and brakes and the odd busted bulb.
Now let’s go back to the launch in 2004, long before the wrong name was put onto the registration document. Back then BMW proudly announced that the 3.0 petrol six powering the 630i was the world’s lightest six-cylinder engine. Unfortunately, the rest of the E64 630i Convertible wasn’t so light. In auto form as here it weighed 1,825kg, which made it 220kg heavier than the E63 coupe and 0.4sec slower over the 0-62mph. Still, 6.9sec is fast enough for most.
What was that engine though? In 2007 it could have been either the N52 or the N53. The N53 replaced the N52 in that very year as the last naturally aspirated straight six BMW engine. Our Shed was registered in March 2007 so we’ll need some BMW nerds to come on here with opinions for us to mock. Assuming it’s the N53 in this car, it should be the B30 version with 268hp and 236lb ft. BMW boasted about the lightness of the motor but another less welcome area in which both the N52 and N53 were light was that of reliability. High pressure fuel pumps, fuel and oxygen sensors and injectors were all known to fail. Of course not all of that happened to all of them. On the plus side the N53 sounded glorious when given its head (insert your own joke here) and the average fuel consumption wasn’t half bad at 35mpg, but you do need to go in with your eyes at least half open.
And maybe with a hat on. The E64’s roof was described by BMW as having a ‘unique fin structure’. Some owners liked to put a sarcastic apostrophe between the ‘f’ and the ‘in’ when the mech broke down, a red light started flashing and the rear window refused to go up, usually because one of the rear soft top supports hadn’t fully straightened during the erection process (see above), as often as not when it was raining nicely. BMW gave you a cranking tool to raise the pane manually but there are no recorded instances of anyone ever managing to make that work. Luckily a US BMW forum poster called Boesman discovered that if you poked the support hinge in the right place through the inner fabric the sensor would sort itself out, the flashing red light would turn to a steady green and the pane would rise. Sadly no amount of poking would get rid of the E63/64 Bangle hump that was mercifully smoothed down in 2011 when the F12/13 gen-three 6 Series came out.
The next owner of this gen-two will either continue its sad decline by hoping for champagne motoring in return for Babycham maintenance or they will see it as a worthwhile running rescue project. If you can see past the ridiculous UK road tax sting of £710, the asking price of £1,999 does add some temptation value to option two. The next cheapest 2007 630i Convertibles you’ll find for sale in the UK are all over £5k, and some of them are nearer to £6k than £5k, even with similar mileages to our Shed’s. You could go for a diesel if you really think that’s an appropriate power unit for a premium intercontinental soft top, but even 635ds aren’t being given away. Shed found one dealer who was hoping to get £4.3k for his/her 196,000-miler. Cripes.
Anyway, Shed is beetling off at this point because the mention of Father Brown and the words ‘630’ and ‘convertible’ have reminded him that it’s time for his Tuesday evening top-down session in the village graveyard with the postmistress. It might sound seedy but it’s a lot more appealing than Mrs Shed with a frying pan in the vestibule.
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