On 03/25/2013 09:54 AM, Bimmer Owner wrote:
On Sat, 23 Mar 2013 07:20:44 -0700, jim beam wrote:

serious question - why did you buy it?

As for me, I fell sway to all the people saying how great the bimmer was.

It was only after I owned it, that I realized that BMW engineers knew
how to design a suspension and a drive train, but they had no idea
how to build a machine.

To their credit, some people say it's not the engineers fault as
they probably know by now that every single Bosch 5.7 ABS control
module fried in every one of the vehicles it was placed in, and that
the final stage unit cooked itself to death in every single BMW it
was ever placed in, and that the 2-bar plastic cooling system
sprang a leak on almost every single BMW ever built, etc.

honda use a "plastic cooling system". it's not infallible, but you can
get 15+ years out of the first one. there's no reason bmw couldn't
achieve the same - if they wanted to.



In fact, there's absolutely NO WAY BMW can't know about these
egregious engineering flaws. So, the common conclusion is that
their customers don't care - so why should they.

that is the catch - bmw target a certain type of buyer that typically
won't keep a car more than 3 years. after that, they don't care and bmw
can safely switch to "maximize parts sales/write off the old cars and
sell new ones" mode.

in europe, bmw have been aggressive leaders in "recycling" and spend a
lot of money advertising the fact. in practice however, it means that
they buy used cars back and have them scrapped, thereby keeping used
parts off the market - the mba's have done their math.



To me, it smacks of 3rd-grade engineering from BMW, so, that's why
I, for one, am amazed (being an owner myself), how sophomoric BMW
engineering really is.

it depends on perspective. i agree that some appear to be extremely
rudimentary, but that is contradicted by the fact that they spend a huge
amount of money on r&d, and have boatloads of phd's on staff. they were
also rescued by a bunch of mba's in the 70's and have had a root and
branch focus on design life ever since.



Disclaimer: Yet, the drive train is phenomenal!

call me when you have 100k miles on it...


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fact check required