Originally Posted by zayd

This is such a load of tripe you have come out with and you actually sound like a marketing spokesman for BMW. I and many of my friends and family have owned numerous BMW's over the last ten years. We thought that it seemed like the obvious upgrade from owning Japanese cars, in the pursuit of luxury, refinement and reliabilty. I'll give you that, they are more luxurious and refined but when it comes to reliability and maintenance costs, you will be paying out of your backside.

In order to perfectly maintain german cars you have to have deep pockets and when they reach around 80k miles many, many parts will start to wear out and need replacing. Very different in comparison to japanese parts fitted to their vehicles. The mechanic, I sourced to look after my BMW's back in the day, used to work for the main dealer as a Master Technician (highest level of mechanic for the BMW), and he confided in me that the parts on the newer age vehicles were made much more inferior. They were built to have a typical shelf life, so that the consumer would have to return to the dealers for consistant repairs to be carried out and the old parts gradually replaced. This guarantees the dealers constant return business.

Japanese cars are still to this day not built in this manner, each part is made to the highest standard available, hence the great levels of reliabilty the consumer enjoys. If you still don't believe me then the facts will speak for themselves.

The Times newspaper did a huge review on 10,000 vehicles over a ten year period to find Britains most reliable marques. Guess what, all the top German makers weren't listed. Honda were first and Subaru were second, with all the other Japanese makers to follow. Only Skoda made it to tenth place.

My own example;
I owned a mint condition BMW e39 530 Sport for 2 years and in that time on just wear and tear items, (no major faults, i.e gearbox, engine pistons etc), I spent around £5000 in maintenance. In comparison, I've owned my STI for the last 2 years and a WRX for a year before that and I've only spent around £200 in maintenance parts.

Originally Posted by ditchmyster

I have to agree with this, because all the people i have known who had BMW's (and it's a fair few considering their nic name, Black Mans Wagon) have spent a fortune on up keep, and always had problems.

I like them but have never had one for this reason.

Oh and toneh, a grown up luxury car is a merc.

Originally Posted by mostsharp

I wrote a long reply but my phone didn't post it for some reason! In short I didn't want to start an argument about what cars best but it makes good reading.
Found a couple of spec d cars but there 2.5's so going to read up on that engine.