No timing belts in the M52/M54 engines. The engines are pretty well bullet proof if the oil has been changed regularly. Higher mileage (50K, 60K?) might have coolant leakage at the thermostat housing, valve cover oil leak into the spark plug tubes, and I think there is a vacuum hose under the plenum that can get leaky. All are small fixes.

- E46 323i wagons (2000 only) can be had in the sub 18K range when they get over 60-60K miles, but the 323 has a less aggressive cam that the 325 (2001 and up) and feels a little underpowered.
- The "lifetime" fluids are a misnomer. I'd recommend a trans fluid and and screen service at 60K, if not earlier. The lifetime trans fluid gets dirty. I'd recommend diff fluid service at around the same time.
- Check the tightness of the moonroof sunshade - they can come off track easily.
- Most of my problems with the e46 have been stupid interior trim things - sunshade, cloth trim on the door seals pulling off, bubbles in the plastic skin on the door map pockets.
- Manual trans are pretty rare with the wagons, most are auto.
- The AWD XI seem to have a 1500-2K price hike over the RWD versions.
- The AWD feels very grippy and well balanced; but adds about 200 lbs/1 mpg less than RWD. I can't wait to through some snow tires on mine and go try to get it stuck.
- In the Mid-Atlantic (PA) the RWD cars tend to sit on dealer lots for 1-2 months, the AWD cars, about a month. So, even on a CPO car, the dealer has some wiggle room even though they'll try to tell you otherwise. I got my dealer down 1700 on a 2003 AWD premium with 17,000.
- I don't notice a difference when driving throttle cable versus throttle-by-wire cars side by side.
- Overal, e46 has a more intuitive cockpit control layout than the e90, and feels like it has a little more low end grunt, even though the e90 325 actually has 3 liter.