5000 miles in a 2005 BMW 3 Series: Can you daily drive a modern classic?

I sometimes wonder where it all started to go wrong, but clearly it wasn't here.

The upgrades eBay has made so far refresh the interior rather well. What I hadn't realised, and one reason I suspect eBay is happy for us to spend some time in this car, is that it has an Assured Fit programme, which money-back-guarantees that parts you order will fit your car.

Barely anything comes without phone mirroring or a reversing camera these days, and the 330Ci's £220 head unit, which has red backlighting to its buttons, feels decidedly well integrated. The head-up display and blindspot monitoring pods less so, but I'm finding I read the speed off the display more than the conventional dial, so it's evidently effective.

That mid-2000s driving experience - and here's where the future modifications will come in - has survived 20 years and 90,000 miles relatively healthily. If you drove one of these at the time, or even a manual, rear-driven BMW more recently, the character still shows through.

The pedal weights are reassuringly firm, the steering has some weight to it and the gearlever action still retains the slightly rubbery but positive shift feel that all manual BMWs had. There's some heft to it but, from halfway into a gear, the lever drops home, welcomed into place by some over-centre mechanism somewhere in the gubbins that feels as tight as ever.

The drivetrain feels as good as I suspect it ever did too. I'm not one to thrash old cars, but it revs freely and with what now, in a world of turbocharging, is a relatively unfamiliar feeling of torque and power building smoothly and linearly - no boosts, plateaus or flat spots. Only GT Porsches tend to feel like that these days.

If there are signs of its age, and I think there are, they come from the chassis. The word 'tired' would be overstating matters, but it's the first one that comes to mind. The 330Ci is still a comfortable and relatively composed car, but as metal ages and gets worked it does fatigue; likewise suspension bushes and more will tire.

If you would spend two decades with the car, I doubt you would notice the gradual ageing, like not clocking the lines on your face as they gradually appear in the mirror. But getting into one 20 years from new, there is a feeling of slack not a lot, mind here and there.

Good news: we have a budget to make a few more upgrades to the car. I'd like to give it a chassis refresh without spoiling things. Owners' forums talk of spring and damper kits that can be too harsh, and this 330Ci will be tested by other journalists after its time with us, and I don't want to be the man who my colleagues think have ruined a perfectly good car. So I'll be going carefully, trying to bring the chassis back to structural rigidity, and refreshing the parts that aftermarket dampers don't reach, to give the standard suspension a proper platform to work from.

The plotting and planning for this has already begun, so more on that in the very next report. In the meantime, I'm finding that even a time-worn 3 Series coupé is one of life's more pleasurable things.

Update 2: The first fault

I think I've identified the areas that I'd like to update on our eBay-owned E46 BMW 330Ci project car, having spent the past few weeks driving it in its standard form. I'd like something to stiffen the shell and something to refresh the suspension - probably by replacing all of the bushes.

When I mentioned the car and the project to some engineers while out driving the new Jaguar Type 00 recently, I was struck by both how many owned or spent time with older BMWs, and encouragingly one told me bushes would make the biggest difference.

I came away pretty excited. This 330Ci was a good driver's car when it was new. It still is now, but it will be nice to bring it back as close to factory as possible. I also think an Alcantara-clad steering wheel would be cool, just because I'm a sucker for the material, and I think a limited-slip differential will tighten up the traction and make it feel nicer on corner exit.

I've identified the parts on eBay, which should all fit hunkily dorily because of the company's Assured Fit programme, and by the time the next report comes around, the work should have been done. In the meantime, daily driving a 20-year-old, 90,000-mile car hasn't been totally straightforward - as I might have expected, because that's the average age of my cars and they sometimes have problems too.

Things just wear out on older cars - although let's not pretend new cars don't have issues either. The BMW had a problem with a front offside brake that started binding. The first time it happened, I could feel the steering wheel shimmy after I pulled away from a junction, but it eased off before I found a safe place to stop to check what was wrong. Then it occasionally repeated. I could identify which corner was the problem by the heat coming off it. I pulled off the relevant wheel and cleaned up the caliper sliders, but that didn't sort it. Its next journey, though, is to a pretty cool garage to have those modifications done to it, so I've added the brake to the list of work. I'll tell you all about it next time.

Mileage: 89,600

Update 3: Have I ruined it?

Gulp, deep breath: have I ruined it? To recap, I've been driving a 90,000-mile, 21-year- old BMW 330Ci (E46) for several weeks, knowing a budget allowed by its owner, eBay, to make some choice modifications, was coming. I wanted to give it a suspension refresh and stiffen the body without turning it into a harsh road racer.

I buy quite a lot of parts from eBay already, and I'm not just saying this because this car belongs to the company. I've got a couple of old cars and a motorbike stored in the 'My Garage' section of its website, which is near-essential because it limits searches to parts that will fit a specific vehicle from an otherwise overwhelming number of results. So I added the 330Ci to my garage too. It's also useful because you know parts will fit and you can send them back for a refund if they don't.

I opted for a bush rebuild kit (£140) for the rear suspension and new bushes for the front (which all seemingly included control arms - £292), plus a brace for the rear struts (£103) that will sit across the boot, and one for the front struts (£81). I haven't felt a massive problem with the BMW's traction but I do like a limited-slip differential so opted for one (£649) and thought/hoped that lot combined would tighten the handling without spoiling the ride.

The car has at some point had a decent exhaust put on it, which is a little boomy, so I thought a big air filter kit (£206) might add some induction noise to balance it. And then I opted for a new steering wheel (Alcantara-finished £319).

Seven parts, then, for £1790, and to fit them I booked an appointment with a delightful man called Derek Drinkwater, an American-car specialist whose garage does a lot of telly work and who recently recreated Cadillac's 'Le Monstre' Le Mans racer and then toured around the US in it, pulling a tiny caravan. Also: very serious garage envy.

A few days later I got the car back, and have I ruined it? Thank heavens, I have not. It still retains much of the suppleness it seemed to have before, with just some of the softness and squidge that I thought was due to wear in the bushes and the body dispelled. Its steering feels sharper too, even though it's wearing winter tyres, which usually move around more than regular tyres. But it's better: tauter yet no less comfortable.

Downsides? A couple. Stiffening the shell has led to it occasionally creaking a bit in tight manoeuvres. And I think turn-in is slightly more reluctant, as is the way with a slippy diff. But traction is improved and it has a nicer corner exit stance, so I'm calling this a win overall. Trailing the brakes into a bend helps. This is all noticeable at normal road speeds, by the way. I don't often drive like my trousers are on fire on the road.

The car is giving subtle messages about stance that are palpable through its lovely new steering wheel. The induction kit doesn't make a huge difference most of the time, either, but is a bit raspier at high revs, and it looks cool if, like me, you're childish. So I'm happy, relieved and really enjoying the 330Ci as a daily. It's engaging, narrower than modern cars and plenty refined enough. Soon there will be more to do: the differential oil needs changing after 500 miles and a service will be due shortly afterwards.

Mileage: 90,040

Update 4: Is this truly a usable daily driver?

Now that our E46 BMW 330Ci has had its fill of drama and excitement, having had its suspension given an overhaul and a minor brake issue resolved at the same time, I've been able to set about enjoying it as a daily driver.

And, as one, it's very pleasant. It wears its 90,000 miles and 21 years well. The age of the average car is rapidly increasing in the UK and currently stands at around a decade. New cars either aren't affordable or desirable enough, or a combination of both, which means that more and more of us are sticking with our older cars.

Thankfully cars like the 330Ci are up to it. As Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said last year: "The days of them rusting away before your eyes are well and truly behind us. Even a 20-year-old car with a full service history can be a good bet for someone seeking a bargain buy that still looks up to date."

That could sum up the 330Ci entirely. Its owner, eBay, bought one of the best old 3 Series coupés it could find and so, despite the miles and the years, I just expect it to start every morning whatever the weather and not throw up a series of error messages in doing so - something it's managing deftly.

It has been on a few noteworthy trips lately. I took my munchkins to Daytona karting in Milton Keynes after the younger one, then the elder one and then the younger one's girlfriend said in turn that they rather fancied some low-horsepower, high-thrills excitement. It was pretty wet and cold but we had a lot of laughs (let's gloss over who set the fastest lap), and I thought my lad's observations were fairly spot on when he said that the 330Ci fitted in extremely well with the rest of the car park.

There were lots of what I would consider daily-friendly enthusiast's cars: BMWs, quicker Fords or Volkswagens, plus Land Rovers and, well, you know - the 'right' sort of car. Ones that were made to be engaging to drive.

Then I went to a garage in my local town to have a 500-mile oil change on the limited-slip differential that was fitted at the same time as the suspension upgrades (and the Alcantara steering wheel I haven't finished boring on about yet). I'd been meaning to visit Classic Collective, a classic car workshop in Bicester (they will basically do everything), for ages, but the BMW's needs gave me the shove I required. Cool place: nice people, cars and coffee.

A mid-2000s BMW is towards the newer end of the cars they look after, but given it's a similar age to the cars I own, I will be using them again. The diff oil had quite a lot of swarf in it, which is why its maker recommended it had a 500-mile change. But given how much was there, I'm going to get it changed again when the car needs a service and an MOT test in a month or so.

Finally I took a Sunday drive over to Gloucester, which I'd love to say was a pleasure but, through no fault of the BMW, it was a stressful drive, in peak pothole season. I took a scenic route over but spent my entire time on edge, weaving between holes in the road, so took the big, boring route home. The BMW aced both of them. 

Mileage: 90,440

Update 6: What about in London?

I'm up early to drive to London City airport, because it's impossible to get there from my house for 7am on public transport - and, besides, I'm a car journalist.

It brings back fond memories, too, of my time working in Bermondsey at the start of the century, when driving through east London was part of my daily routine - sometimes in E46 BMWs.

I remember the ease of the M25 before 6am and the general quiet of the M11, London's forgotten entry road - except for today, because the M25 is blocked, so it's full of people diverting south and then back out east towards Dartford on the A13.

And I like how genuinely quiet the Docklands roads around the airport can be at all times - remarkably so, given it's an international hub bang in the nation's capital. If landing here and getting into a cab were your first taste of the UK, you would wonder where everyone was.

I think our 330Ci looks great in this environment. And if it weren't for red routes everywhere, I'd stop to photograph it here more too. The buildings that sprung up in the late 1990s and early 2000s were designed at the same time as this car. It would have featured in architectural models and renderings, so that prospective tenants could imagine this sleek silver 3 Series coupé with a suave 20-something City trader at the wheel - not a 50-year-old baldy with backache, as today, but still, I'll live the part.

While it's a sports coupé, the 330Ci makes this kind of commute easy. Sixth gear is long, the steering is heavy and exceptionally stable around the straight-ahead and it will approach 40mpg if you try.

And you know how people treat you differently in different cars? Drivers of 3 Series coupés must come across as either willing to put their foot down or slightly scary people, because nobody ever acts aggressively towards it. No tailgating, no bullying - very different to being in my Audi A2, even though I drive it in much the same way.

Being in traffic is less pleasant. The clutch is heavy, which is a bit wearisome. Control weights don't have to be heavy to be engaging, and the modern trend - allowed by electric power steering, I suppose - has been for lighter weighting in recent years. But I like the positivity of the 330Ci's pedals and steering and accept it, even to the fact that it doesn't like crawling in second where most cars would lug it out.

Shock horror: I've found a time when it beeps and bongs. It's when the temperature falls below 3deg C. Which means in the one early-morning journey per year when the air hovers between 2deg C and 10deg C, it might beep three times. Quaint, really. Overreactive ADAS this is not.

Next day, job over (incidentally, if you enjoy flying, banking right over The Shard so close you could touch it is one of the world's best airport approaches), I head home in one of the more miserable journeys I've had. A shut M1, a crash on the M40 and roadworks on minor roads all conspire to make me too late to swap the 330Ci for my just-serviced A2 at Bicester's Classic Collective.

The BMW had its service and MOT prep here a week previously, where the good people noted that it needed new belts. They had been squeaking during really cold and damp mornings, but they had got over it and been quiet ever since.

However, when it came to it, the technicians also thought some of the pulleys looked tired, so they placed some on order and we arranged that I'd call in to drop the BMW off when I was next free, which happily coincided with the chance to swap back into the A2.

So as I write, the 330Ci is getting some TLC - probably the last time it will have any particular attention before it returns to its owner, eBay, in a couple of weeks. 

Mileage: 91,540

Update 7: Coupe shows its practical side

It occurred to me the other day that I hadn't tried sitting in our E46 coupé's rear seats. Turns out they're fine, really. Access is the bigger issue than space. I don't think you would want to fold infirm relatives in and out, but some forum users say they've used 330s as their only family car. Many firms offer a tidy seat delete pack, though - popular with those who turn these into track or fast road cars.

Mileage: 92,100

Update 8: Is our 330Ci a keeper?

Our time with this modernised E46 BMW 330Ci is almost up, but it has just required a little more remedial work. When it went in for a service prior to its MOT test (from which it got a clean bill of health), the technicians thought that some belts needed replacing, but when it came to doing them they realised that the pulleys would want renewing too.

I've since taken the car back to my friends at Classic Collective in Bicester to have that done. When I received a text to say it was ready, they said that if I waited 45 minutes it would be cleaned by the time I arrived. They host cars and coffee events for car clubs and had been giving the place a little spruce-up prior to a weekend gathering, and pleasingly the 330Ci got caught up in a wider sponging operation.

Pleasing because I've spent enough hours on cold remote hillsides stubbing freezing fingers against intricate alloys, cleaning them for photos, that I'm decidedly slack at cleaning cars when I don't have to.

It did mean another trip to a garage. That isn't unexpected for a 92,000-mile car, but it is the kind of routine that's worth bearing in mind if you decide that running an older used car as a daily is a better idea than a new one on the drip of finance, which will need little more than a cursory glance once a year. This is the way I prefer to run cars (and this car's owner, eBay, is accepting the costs for this) but I get that it doesn't work for everyone.

If you want to try to know exactly what motoring will cost you per month rather than be left a little to fate, a new finance deal with service plan would, I suppose, be the way. But that would mean missing out on a car as exciting as a 330Ci, which would be a shame, especially given that it cost less than £10,000 when it was most recently bought.

It's not like the 330Ci is unreliable, either, and there's good online support for common issues. On one forum, a commenter wrote that the biggest likely problem is tripping up a kerb when you turn around to look at your 330Ci after you've parked it because it's so effing awesome. But more broadly, subframes can crack and corrode, the underbody can rust elsewhere, suspension towers can benefit from reinforcement plates and the cooling system needs keeping an eye on, especially as hoses go brittle.

There are loads of new or used parts, though. I've been wondering what I would do next if the 330Ci were hanging around, given that I have another daily too. The world of E46 3 Series in regular use is still incredibly broad, from cheap 320d Touring 'dog walk cars' to perfectly preserved M3s, with something like this 330Ci somewhere in the middle. If it wasn't an essential daily driver, I think it would be nice if it received mods to best highlight its mechanical layout and driver appeal, mostly by making it lighter.

The quickest and easiest way would be to start by removing the rear seats, plus a lot of softer bits like carpets and soundproofing, although I suppose there's a point where it would start to become tiring on long journeys. I've found carbonfibre bonnet and bootlids for £1600 a pop, some motorsport alloys would reduce the unsprung mass, then I guess some light front seats could come in, although before you know it if you've gone to so much trouble that you've effectively got a track car. So chuck in a roll-cage and apply some racing numbers.

The good thing about a car like the 330Ci is that it's one of those cars that could do everything. 

Mileage: 92, 946

Update 9: Insurance woes

A reader writes with a warning about fitting a limited-slip differential, as we have to our E46 coupé. I thought £650 plus fitting was quite good value, but that might not be the end of the costs. Our reader's insurer wanted to treble his premium after he fitted one. By calling around he reduced that to a 60% increase, but still. Gulp. 

Mileage: 92,980

Update 10: Better and better

There were a few creaks when manoeuvring at very low speeds after the 330Ci received new suspension bushes and braces front and rear, but the noises seem to have gone away largely now. Not sure where they came from, but maybe things like that take a few miles to bed in and settle - or I've just got used to them or I'm driving around them. But I don't think so. Anyway, glad to not hear it. 

Mileage: 93,011

Final report: A sad farewell

For the past few months, I've been driving this 330Ci, an old- school BMW of the type that once so epitomised the brand. It's a rear- wheel-drive, five-seat coupé with a naturally aspirated straight six and a manual gearbox - a kind of car that nobody makes any more.

Wearing nearly 90,000 miles on arrival but corrosion-free and in good condition, it's a car that would retail for around £9000 - which is what its owner, eBay, paid for it.

Then they set about giving its technology a refresh, by adding an Apple CarPlay-compatible head unit, blindspot monitors and some other useful additions. But it also came to us with a budget to make some more modifications to it. I will come to those. First, though, to the experience of a mechanically standard 330Ci. It's a car that was showing the age of the E46 generation of 3 Series relative to its rivals by 2005 (it had been on sale since 1997), but that doesn't matter a jot today. It feels great, compact by modern standards, at less than 1.8m wide across the body, with keen RWD handling and a loping ride that is more comfortable than I remember it being at the time. It's a really great cruiser.

And what a drivetrain. I'd have had no idea that it had done nearly 90,000 miles if the odo hadn't said so. It felt as tight and responsive as I'd always thought a new BMW did, with a supremely smooth engine whose power builds gently and linearly and a shift that retains the beefy positivity and slight rubberiness that it had when new.

There's a beef to the BMW's controls all round, with heavy pedals and a meaty steering weight too. These were quite common at the time but you will find much less evidence of them in today's cars, even today's BMWs, which remain among the more positively weighted cars on the market. I liked it then and I like it now. I don't think cars need hefty controls, but when they're this linearly responsive I'll take them.

The 330Ci's interior had stood up to the test of time well, too. I liked most of the mods that had already been made to the car (phone mirroring is one of the most useful infotainment innovations that the industry has made over the past two decades), but the fundamentals of this 3 Series cabin remained. By today's metrics it has a very straightforward and simple layout, with terrific ergonomics, soft lighting and seats that were showing a bit of wear but remained both supportive and comfortable.

The 330Ci didn't need modifying, but there was a budget for it, so I went for a small chassis refresh. It's possible to go big with aftermarket suspension kits on used BMWs (many are turned into fast road or track or even race cars) but I didn't want to do that. Instead I wanted to bring it back closer to where I think it would have been when it was new, before the years and the miles had taken a (small) toll on the chassis' rigidity.

Bracing across front and rear struts and new bushes all around would do, I thought, then I added a limited-slip differential, which I thought would improve traction, and an Alcantara-covered steering wheel, just because I like them.

The changes did largely what I'd wanted them to, bringing a bit of life and tautness back to the 330Ci without ruining the ride, although I think the bracing also introduced a couple of creaks at manoeuvring speeds until it all settled in, at which point it mostly went away. The differential did improve traction nicely, while reducing some corner entry keenness - a balance I was happy with too.

The 330Ci needed more work than a new car, perhaps inevitably, even if it hadn't been for the mods. There was an MOT test, for one, plus a brake binding issue that was sorted at the same time as the suspension refresh was occurring. And during its pre-MOT service some wear items (belts and pulleys) were flagged that I wouldn't have experienced if I'd bought a new car on the drip. But it's not like new cars don't go wrong either, and there's a strong following plus lots of back-up for enthusiast cars like the 330Ci.