Maintenance. is. everything. Honestly, as the 3 year owner of a high mileage E36, I would recommend staying very, very far away from a $2000 BMW unless you're a fairly adept do-it-yourself repairman and you want to work on this car. With a BMW that has over 150k, there's no telling what sort of condition it could be in under the hood without a full stack of maintenance records to review. The cooling systems have a life expectancy of about 60k miles, and the plastic on the radiator lasts for about 5-10 years. Cooling systems tend to look about the same on the day they are installed as they do the day they fail, so you'll want to make sure that is "within spec" so to speak. Bushings. These things eat them for breakfast. You'll want to check the front control arm bushings, sway bar end links, tie rods, and rear trailing arm bushings. There are more up in the subframe but they seem to hold on a bit longer (they are also a bitch to replace, more so than the others). Shifter bushings, the automatics in these cars are junk, and with the mileage you're considering, the manual is going to be the more reliable choice. However, the shifters like to gobble up bushings like nobody's business. You can order all the little bushings to rebuild it relatively inexpensively though, and then your gears wont run away from you and hide in the corner. There's a decent chance the shocks are blown, but you can get an off-brand stock quality replacement set of all four for less than $200. Other more standard maintenance items: Check the age of the battery and make sure the car starts nice and strong, check the valve cover gasket to see if it's holding oil (if this leaks badly oil can get down around the spark plugs and fry your ignition coils, ask me how I know), check the condition of the belts and listen for pulley squeaks, I'm only a few away from replacing every damn pulley on my motor. See when the clutch was replaced if you can, otherwise make sure its nice and strong. (put it in 5th, let the clutch out, if it dies fast the clutch is good). You'll want to check out the exhaust hangers and make sure its not about to make a run for it, and check the general condition of the motor mounts, transmission mounts, and the big driveshaft bushing right at the back of the transmission. Chances are, on any bimmer of that age the VANOS system is going to be essentially non-functioning. They have almost a 100% fail rate and most people don't fix it because its a bitch of a job. It took me about 8 hours in labor and requires the use of a lot of specialty tools. This isn't really a huge deal, the power delivery just wont be a smooth as it could/should be, and you lose a handful of horsepower, but it wont affect the longevity of the motor. You can get an idea of what kind of condition its in by gently accelerating in 1st or 2nd to about 2k-2500rpms, and then let off the throttle and listen for a "marbles in a can" sound. Also, just general advice, dont expect the interior of an E36 or an E34 to be very nice without a ton of work, BMW really let their interiors slip in the 90s. Mine is held together with spit and hope, I've just gotten used to the rattling at this point. **TL;DR:**This is not going to be a dead reliable commuter you can buy and run into the ground. However, if you go into it knowing it is going to be a bit of a project, they can be incredibly rewarding and extremely fun to drive cars with a ton of character. The enthusiast community is enormous, and for every problem out there, someone has probably already cooked up a cheap, do-it-yourself fix for it. If you want a commuter that you never have to worry about or sacrifice a weekend to changing all your cooling hoses and radiator (COUGH COUGH, looking at you, my car) then I'm afraid your wife might be right. EDIT: And by the way, all the links you'll ever need are in the sidebar. Bimmerfest is my personal favorite forum, avoid E46fanatics like the plague, and RealOEM is your savior. Also, the Bentley manual will tell you how to service it bumper to bumper, and rockauto is an awesome place for cheap parts. More on reddit.com

As long as you learn to do basic maintenance yourself, I don't think you'll have problem (I've understood BMW repair is pretty expensive in the US). You should naturally have someone with expertise check the car out before you buy it, but keep good care of a BMW and it'll keep going bloody near forever. More on reddit.com

*80s More on reddit.com

First gen xB. A masterpiece of efficient packaging. More on reddit.com