This 20-year-old BMW 3 Series has the tech of a modern car, and I love it

I’ve driven a few new cars recently which have irritated the daylights out of me. A week with the MG S6 EV had me hearing the driver attention alert bong in my sleep, and the Xpeng G6’s glitchy screen saw me stranded for 40 minutes while I tried to coax it into life. It makes me happy to get back into my own 2004 BMW Z4, but then I miss features like Android Auto and blind spot monitoring.

So can you have your cake and eat it too? Well, eBay seems to think so. Enter its BMW 330 Ci “Tech Transformation”. It’s a 2005 3 Series from my favourite generation, known as E46 in enthusiast circles, with one of my favourite ever engines – the silky-smooth 3.0-litre straight-six.

This is my sort of car, and eBay has fitted a whole host of modern tech which it reckons drivers can’t live without in 2026. It has a new touchscreen with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, an upgraded sound system and even blind-spot monitoring.

The idea behind it is that you don’t have to trade in your old car to get modern tech features – and in some ways I’m all for it.

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After spending a week with this old 330Ci, I fell in love with it. It drives really nicely, offering a sense of connection to the road which is lacking from a lot of new cars, but the biggest surprise was how well most of the tech worked.

I had no issues at all with the central screen. Sure, it’s on the small side, but it was super-easy to pair my phone and the connection to Android Auto never let me down. The upgraded speakers and subwoofer also sound really good, and the aftermarket blind-spot monitoring system was the star of the show.

It’s a really clean install, using two sensors hidden behind the rear bumper and some lights fitted to the door, but it works really well. That said, one of the beauties of an old coupe is that you have excellent all-round visibility – so do you really need blind-spot monitoring? It could be useful on my Z4 though, because with the roof up you could hide a small town over your shoulder.

It wasn’t all rosy though. This car has an aftermarket reversing camera fitted, and it’s not as good as the one you’d get on a new car. The guide lines bear no resemblance to where the car will end up. The stuck-on head-up display looks pretty tacky as well, so I wouldn’t bother with that.

Then there’s the usual old car stuff to deal with. This 330Ci was leaking a bit of oil, and maintaining a 20-year-old car will never be as straightforward as owning something newer. I should know – I daily drove a 2005 Skoda Octavia vRS for 18 months and I spent over £1,500 in repairs alone.

This particular car is rather expensive as well, but that’s mainly down to the rarity of it. A 330Ci in this condition with a manual gearbox is hard to find, and so the car cost £8,990 to start with. The initial upgrades, including the new stereo, blind-spot monitoring system, tyres and a few cosmetic bits, add another £2,247 to bring the total to £11,237.

It’s also had some mechanical upgrades, including a limited-slip differential, refreshed suspension components and a pair of stiffening strut braces. As it sits, this car has cost almost £15,000.

For that sort of money, I’d buy something newer. You could have a 2017 Volkswagen Golf GTI, or even a 2017 BMW 3 Series. These cars fall into that sweet spot of being modern enough to have the features you want, without the tech being too intrusive.

Not all new cars are irritating either. I’ve been daily driving a Skoda Fabia 130 for the last six months, and it’s really easy to get along with. There are plenty of cars out there which still have proper buttons as well, such as the Honda Civic and Renault 5. Owning a reliable new car is certainly easier than having something older.

But if you love your old car, and want some more mod cons, you could always consider upgrading it with some aftermarket tech to bring it up to date.

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