[AP]

Had a test drive this morning in a 1 year old 530D SE with a view to trading in my beloved e39 530i Msport.
Aim is to buy a F10 530d msport with a load of options.

My view of the 530d SE is this :-

Steering - well plenty of chat on these forums about this but coming from the E39 it is light. You get used to it for sure but its no way as good as the E39. When I got back into it the sterring just felt considerablyt better. I'd give the 39 sterring 10/10 but the F10 say 5/10. It does the job but it could be so much better and feed back more of what the front wheels are doing.In the E39 you can feel what the tyres are doing , the F10 is rather numb in comparison.This SE didn't have the sport mode so couldn't verify how much better the sport mode might be in terms of weighting .

Engine. Well the 3 litre diesel really is very good in deed. At idle, you can tell its a diesel but once on the move, its very refined and smooth and the power is effortless. As soon as you press down on the loud pedal, it just goes. It makes a nice noise when accelrating and if you floor it, blimey does it go!

Interior is fine, I did notice the reflections in thge windsfreen that have also been mentioned on these forums of the speaker and where the HUD would be, this only occured with the sun ahead of the car. With the sun behind these went away. No issues with this on a E39 at all.

I'm not sure you need a bong to go off when you enter the car, whats that about? (A bong should be to indicate a potential issue)

The car had the standard part electric seats, felt they didn't go up high enough, I prefer to sit as high as I can - are the fully electric versions any better?
The dash seems higher (as the bonnet is quite high) and this may contributre to the feeling of sitting lower.

Despite the car being only 2 inches wider and 5 inches longer, it feels liek such a largeer car. (in fact the new F30 is not much shorter than a e39 and is in fact 1 inch wider )

The headlining also feels inferior to the one fitted in my e39. The e39 had an athracite sort of fuzzy felt material but the F10 feels a bit cheap and plasticky. So would opt for the alacantara one instead, that adds £785 to the order and potentially adds a month to the delivery time.

Must admit I came away a little disapointed as it didn't have that wow factor that I felt when I first drove an e39 years ago. In some way its not as good,(steering, reflections) its almost as if it was designed by a bunch of new people who hadn't driven a E39 but had just read about one.(just ,my view!)
Biggest advantage was the engine, very impressed with that and the gadgets that you can now get. HUD will be good!

In msport guise, its a very nice looking bit of kit though.

Anyone bought a F10 coming from a E39 and had similar thoughts / regrets?