Yes, the E65 comes with a fair amount of Bangle-inspired baggage. Thank goodness it's got a big boot, eh...
Shed has always been a sucker for a E65 Seven, even though he knows they’re not all that great to drive and by gum they’re ugly. We’ll get onto that later though. First, a bit of background.
Anyway, the E65 was the first BMW to be signed off by the controversial notebook-toting design mould-breaker Chris Bangle. Which brings us without any further ado to the boot. Most would agree that almost anything else would probably have been easier on the eye than Bangle’s ‘flame surfacing’ design, the sign-off document of which should perhaps have had a flame rather than a board member’s signature passed over its surface.
In this pre-’05 iteration the inline six M57 D30 TU single-turbo diesel chugged out 214hp. These earlier 3.0 diesels are generally regarded as more trustworthy than the later 228hp TU2 units but you still need to watch out for swirl flaps, MAF sensors, stretched cam chains, and turbos that might not last much beyond 125,000 miles. Our shed has done 166,000 so it would be nice to see some reassuring paperwork on that. If all is well you can expect an 8.
If Shed was the owner, he would only ever see the back of it whenever he was loading it up with what he likes to call windfall fruit and veg from the gap in the hedge to next door’s farm. Car ugliness, for Shed, is for others to suffer. He wouldn't have to put up with it from the driver’s seat, especially as he’d be sitting a little lower in this one thanks to its collapsed side bolster. Clearly that seat has been slid across by many an ample buttock in its time.