My New 535d

A few days after the accident, my wife and I were due to make a road trip to the south of England to visit our daughter. Fortunately the hire car provided by the insurance company, a BMW 3 series Touring, allowed us to keep those plans. It also presented us with an opportunity…

Since we were travelling the full length of the country from central Scotland to Chippenham, I searched for potential 535d replacements along the route. Unfortunately the 535d E61 is pretty rare so I only came up with three potential candidates. One near Bristol, one near Slough and one near Bolton. In fact the one near Bolton only came on the market the day we started back home.

The one near Bristol was a pretty basic spec and didn’t even have Xenon headlights so I didn’t bother going to see it but I made an appointment to see the one near Slough. We even got half way along the M4 before I got a call to say it was sold! Oh well…

I then called the dealer near Bolton to see if I could come and see his car the following day and we made arrangements. I viewed the car and took it for a drive and we did the deal!

Just arrived home with the Silver 535d with my other 535d sitting behind it and the insurance hire car in the background.

Having the silver 535d takes the time pressure away from the repair process of the white one which turned out to be important as the Covid-19 lockdown descended on us a few weeks later.

I’ll talk more about the silver 535d at a later date but it’s basically the same car albeit a year older and with fewer miles. I plan to do a similar online logbook for it in due course so watch this space!

Accident!

I’ve been driving for 30 years so I guess it was inevitable that one day someone would run into the back of me. Today was that day!

Rear offside view

Rear nearside view

Minimal front end damage to the grill area

As you can see, it was a lovely morning with the sun shining and dry roads. I had come to nice gentle halt as the traffic in front had stopped due to someone turning right into a junction. I was a good 6 to 8 feet behind the car in front of me when I saw a red object in my rear mirror approaching with no signs of slowing down. I just had time to yell and make a funny face before I got hit and pushed into the car in front!

The guy who hit me was on his way to return the hire van and had clearly been distracted in some major way to not notice several vehicles directly in his path on such a bright day. The car in front was driven by a young Mum who had her son as front passenger. To be honest I’m glad I was there because otherwise he would probably have hit them directly instead of me.

The impact wasn’t enjoyable and certainly left me a bit stunned initially but nobody was injured and we got the front two vehicles off the road into an adjacent car park to exchange details etc. The van was not drivable unfortunately and the ensuing road blockage soon attracted the police who took statements and breath tested everyone. Happily we were all fine and recorded “zero” test results.

I had a good look at my car at the roadside and after a chat with one of the police officers we concluded it was safe enough to drive home carefully which I did. The car felt fine on the journey home except for a slight rattle where clearly the exhaust had been displaced from it’s normal hanging position and was touching the underbody somewhere. When I got home I took a closeup of the rear damage before starting my insurance claim.

I had a dash cam fitted so I sent the footage from that and the photos I took at the scene to the police and insurance company. This resulted in the van driver being held 100% liable which certainly made the insurance process very straightforward for me as it activated various perks such as a hire car through my legal protection cover. My insurer was Admiral Insurance and honestly I can’t fault them in the slightest.

As I expected, the value of the car and cost of commercial repair using brand new BMW parts conspired to render it uneconomical to repair and so it was deemed a CAT S write-off by the insurance company based purely on the photos I sent them before any dismantling. I could have argued for a CAT N but there was some damage to the spare wheel well so technically that does constitute structural damage. However, all other damaged parts were easily replaceable by unbolting the old and fitting the new, and since I am free to use second hand but genuine parts, I felt the car was too good to let go. So I bought it back from the insurance company with the intention of repairing it myself. As you’ll see from the other pages of my blog, I have considerable mechanical knowledge experience as well as the required tools and a garage!