He’s Owned 103 BMW X5s. Here’s the One He’d Buy for $15,000

Sean Troy bought his 103rd X5 two days before we recorded this episode of the BMWBLOG Podcast. He still owns 28 of them, with 15 parked outside his shop in Georgia and the rest tucked into a corner of his father’s shop in Charleston, and he’s 28 years old. So when we opened by asking which X5 someone should buy with $15,000, we expected him to say E53. He picked the E70 35d instead.

That answer set the tone for the hour. Sean runs Alpine Rennsport, a BMW and Porsche shop in Cleveland, Georgia, about 10 minutes from Helen, and his advice, not only on the X5, but other cars as well, comes from experience.

Every X5 Generation, From Someone Who Fixes Them

We went through all four generations, starting with the one he knows best. For E53 newcomers, Sean nearly always recommends a pre-facelift 3.0i with the M54 inline-six, because short of deliberately overheating one, it’s very hard to kill. His personal favorite is the 4.6is, but he warns that more of them are turning up with bore scoring, which he considers unfixable today. He also explains why he believes the N62 V8 in the facelift cars runs hotter than it should, and what that heat does to its seals and gaskets.

On the E70, he doesn’t hedge: avoid the first-generation twin-turbo V8s in the xDrive50i and X5 M. The 35d, on the other hand, is his answer for almost everything, including an off-road build. The F15 gets a cooler reception, with the N55 as his pick for reliability, while the G05 is his second-favorite X5 after the E53. His own 2021 X5 M50i went from 14,000 miles to about 70,000 under his ownership, much of it at the track while instructing at VIR, and he lists what’s starting to fail on G05s as they age: transfer cases, front differentials and A/C evaporators.

He also shares his picks at $25,000 and $50,000, his take on the plug-in hybrids, and the two X5s he considers the most reliable ever built.

How Someone Ends Up With 103 X5s

The second half is Sean’s story, and it goes further than we expected. His first X5 was a black pre-facelift 4.4i he bought from his brother’s childhood best friend’s parents, and it needed timing chains and guides at around 170,000 miles. His second was his mother’s old X5, which he tracked down and bought back. The obsession has a serious side, too. Sean credits an X5 with saving his mother’s life, and last September his wife walked away from a 45 to 50 mph T-bone rollover in one of his E53s with little more than a bloody nose from the airbag.

We also get into the rarest car in his collection, a Neiman Marcus edition X5, the neglected ones he has bought from drug dealers and parted out, and the X5 BMW never officially built: an ALPINA version. Sean then walks through his tribute to the X5 Le Mans, which he calls “LM-ish.”

It starts with his Imola Red 4.8is, his third X5 and the one that means the most to him, and adds an S85 V10 from the E60 M5, a six-speed manual, rear-wheel drive with a limited-slip differential, and a carbon roof in place of the heavy panoramic sunroof. The engine went in the weekend before we recorded, and he’s aiming to have it driving by the end of the year.

The Podcast Moves To BMWBLOG Extra

From now on, the BMWBLOG Podcast will live on our new BMWBLOG Extra YouTube channel. The main BMWBLOG channel stays focused on reviews, new car launches and special events, while Extra gives us room for long-form conversations like this one and other topics that don’t quite fit on the main channel.

You can watch the full episode with Sean on BMWBLOG Extra and subscribe there for future episodes. The audio version is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other platforms. To follow Sean’s collection and the LM-ish build, find him on Instagram at @makee53sgreatagain, and his shop at @alpine_rennsport.