What about M5's then?

I agree with that but wouldn't be looking at a 5 or 6 year old car with 30-40k miles at £30k from a private seller.

When the Civic Type R came out in 2002 I went for a test drive and the salesman drove it out of the dealership, onto the main road and promptly redlined it in 2nd!
I wouldn't touch a car that had possibly undergone that sort of treatment.

Great car, but didn't Racing find his was monumentally expensive to run?

£27k for a 12 reg with below 30k miles does seem a relative bargain but my concern from a buying point of view would be running costs. Of course it will drink a lot of fuel but I’m thinking of all the major bills it could start throwing up due to age, despite the mileage being low. I could be wrong but at 6 years old it will be on the cusp of starting to require a lot of maintenance and I imagine the cost of a warranty will reflect this.

Easiest way to find out is to phone them. The number is 0345 641 9790 or the e-mail address is bmwwarrantysales@allianz-assistance.co.uk  but expect at least 24 hours for an e-mail reply. 

I do think the servicing/warranty etc would probably be noticeably more than on the XFR.

I just had a quote for £600 from the cheapest local bodyshop for repairing the XFR's recent scrape. On top of it needing two new front tyres as soon as the summers go back on, and a full service in about 3k miles.

I've a good mind to buy two second hand tyres, just get chipsaway to spray the scratch and not worry about the fact its slightly dented, and trade it in before the next service is needed. Otherwise that's £1500 I won't get back. I can get 90% of the 2018 warranty back too if I cancel it soon (another £900)

Not a fan of the hearsey CLS estate, but that saloon is nice.

Top budget for me though, and I'd rather have a privately owned from new (or for a long time) car from someone that seems to give a shit, than a top priced car from a non-brand dealer.

Even franchised cars are not always good, there is a warning on the XFR owners group about one being sold by a Jag dealer where they replaced the engine under warranty and it's never worked properly since. That seems fairly standard when dealers replace an engine, it happened to my boss's 528 a long time ago.

I'll grant you that the M5 is nice. But it's not a Jaaaag is it? And one of the things you said you liked about your XFR was that Jags go largely under the radar.  Whereas I suspect that an M5 (while nowhere near as bad as an M3 / M4) might as well have a big target painted on it attracting attention. 

Do these later M5 's have a proper auto gearbox or do they still have a twin clutch?

Leather dash and suede headliner was a £5k individual option, so not many of the cheaper ones I have seen have that option and it makes a big difference.

The power is appealing, but the engine note is remarkably plain and uninspiring. I also wouldn’t be cock a hoop about a DCT box either, gimme a manual or a proper slusher.

The DCT box is rather odd if you have been used to a normal auto because there is no creep on tickover and manoeuvring into parking spaces can be very tricky because the clutch is effectively controlled by the amount of throttle and for tight spaces it is seriously difficult to be smooth or accurate. The car also rolls away unless you apply the handbrake and it isn't as straight forward to leave in gear on a steep hill. 

Its the observation I made in the Macan I had for a few days recently. Trying to reverse park on a slope and up a kerb with no creep function and only an electronic parking brake was a bit of an experience. If you touch the throttle nothing happened and if you gave it a bit more it leapt backwards. No doubt a ZF 8 speed would of handled this a lot better.

Hmm, on gearbox alone that's out then! I always assume that since BMW (and Porsche etc) persist in making DCT boxes (which must be very expensive to design/manufacture) even for large luxury cars they would get the basics right - i.e. refinement and a similar feel to a "proper" auto box. I get on with "proper" auto boxes very well, I like the creep, and on ZF's I like the manual changes as well, which are miles faster than say a Ferrari 430 or similar single-clutch automated, and close enough to a DCT to make no difference unless chasing a tenth of a second for the marketing dept. Especially with a big car, you need to be able to manoeuvre a few inches at a time, predictably. I also love the way you can control the ZF boxes with just the throttle too, there are all sorts of little tricks you learn over time to make them change down just enough without a full kickdown (which I rarely wanted in the 330 let alone the XFR!).

I get what PG is saying as well - I do park my cars in some right shitholes at times, leave them in station car parks overnight, etc.

I need to stop looking at pictures of them. I was a teenager when the first M5 came out, and I watched motorsport at Brands a lot as we were local and my uncle worked for Reynard. There were always loads of M5's around the paddock, and for me it's an iconic car, more so than the other "M's". When I see the back of them and the 4 pipes and M5 badge, logic can be lost...

I must admit to not being especially excited about either another XFR or anything else I'm looking at right now, and being pretty pissed off about the £600 bill to relair my parking scrape, but that may just be a weather and work stress related funk. The newer XFR's all seem to have the dark wheels and most of them are white or black, and often have red or white leather. An XE S has just come up in red with black leather in Chichester at Jag there, I may see that. It's emerging as the leader even though it's a bit of a grey option. If fuel prices go right back up then averaging mid 30's is going to appeal a lot more than the 24 at best that I get now I use my car more for short trips, and give it the bean more, and I get the feeling the XE S would be a great car for hammering around local lanes on - probably more so than an M5.

Interesting thoughts on the PDK in a Saloon / SUV, I’ll let you know what I think in a couple of weeks as I’m borrowing a MacanTurbo (PDK) for a couple of hours.

That's essentially my car and yes: you do need all that BHP. Too much is never enough. Normal auto is far more grown up than trying to change gear and pretending you're Jacky Ickx in a 917: it's a car on the public road with a huge torque band and computer telling it what gear to be in.

I'm at an average of 18.6mpg with a lot of short journeys and London use. On a run it's 23mpg with a best tank of 25mpg. The issue is when you use kickdown if the mpg average is 25mpg it becomes 20mpg in about 1 mile: the throttle bodies basically just pour neat petrol in the combustion chamber.

There is no more comfy car in this class and the F10/11 is still better looking than either the E60 or G30/31 especially the front end of the latter with its gaping hole of a grille. There is another thread running about dropping dead before your time, so follow the advice and just buy one of these and bollocks to the expense.