2005 BMW 1 Series 120iA review from Mexico

One rear door seal came loose, but it was easy to fix, and the only other thing I can remember is that when you close the front doors you have to pay attention to the buckles of the seat belts; if they are not in their position, they can badly harm the door panel.

BMW service in Mexico is terrible. I have a Mercedes A-160 with 160,000kms and has never had a single problem, and a BMW 325i F1 SMG that is a great car, but the BMW service is a crap. I now service it in the Mercedes dealer (!!!). Anyway, in one of the many times I have had to send my 325i to the dealer because of their mistakes and even bad mannered service, I demanded a dealer car until they gave me back mine (it had been already too much time in the dealer). To shorten the story, my car was one month in the dealer, and the car they gave me for that time -and because I did a lot of a fuss to have an exchange car- was a 120iA. In one month I took it quite far, I did 3,000kms. The car always behaved very well. Reliability was excellent. It felt as a new car -I have driven almost all the BMW range, but the and 7 series. So quality is very good, excellent. It is very well made. Of course, my 325i has a better finish, but it costs the double. The 120i has durable materials and it is very confortable. It handles very well. It is stable, safe and top speed is all right -I went with it to some 210kms/hr and it felt it could give a little more. The engine is a little bit noisy when accelerating hard, but I think the automatic transmission is in part responsible for that. Anyway, this transmission shifts very well, very smoothly, and it is quite enjoyable, although this is not an sports car, and less so with automatic transmission, but it behaves very well, above average. Much better car than a Bora 2.5 liters, but not as good, of course, as a 3 series in sportiveness (at least the 325i, in Europe there are some models with very little engines).

In the whole, very good and recommendable car, but dealers service is the worst I have dealt with, absolutely impossible to recommend from that point of view.