If you drive such a little amount, surely you'd be better off with a petrol engined car? I wouldn't think economy would be very important if you don't do many miles.
I'd get an E36 328 or something like that and save even more cash.

 

Ultimately though, even if the price of the diesel is more, its easily made up for by doing nearly twice the mpg!

I think I favour the 330d at the moment, quite fancy an auto too.....lazy.

 

If money's that important, you'd be better off with a hoop n' stick.

Better throttle response, too.

 

320d and a remap would probably provide better residuals if that was important?

For

 

The 2.0d m sport touring does look good and should move well with 177bhp - its good on tax too.

The thing is, I dont want to tie up too much cash in this so Im going to have to compromise somewhere down the road - Im even considering the A4 avant wih the bigger engine in now........so many options to consider, I think its going to come down to how I feel on the test drive - paper figures etc are ok but the proof is going to be in the test drive

 

I think the 2.0d engine fitted to the 3 last series were not 177bhp.

I think they were 150bhp, unless you got for one of the last of the the old shape cars (but I'm sure they would be out of your budget).

Ours is 163bhp, the facelift model is 177bhp

 

Blurter's right, I thought we were talking E90 not E46.

Last of the E46's were 163bhp.

A4 Avant with the 2.5 TDI is 163bhp too and I am not sure if it's that efficient?

 

I have the new 520d M-Sport with the later 177hp engine, when I last looked the engine could not be remapped by DMS and alike due to the BMW encription on the ~ECU, the previous engine is the 163hp as others have stated and this can be re-mapped.

 

BMW are becoming complete gits about this.

No-one has managed to remap the N54 *35i engine yet either due to the encryption. It's weird because the *35d engine is not encrypted

There are plenty of 'piggy back' systems out there though, but not sure I trust them!

 

I think you're gonna see a lot more of that in the future; it's not BMW's fault, as such.

It may be emissions/nannying, but I suspect they are trying to preserve their engines' reputation for longevity.