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The bit the gets me more than the sale price is servicing. BMWs have a terrible record for needing expensive repairs. I know you shouldn’t rely on anecdote, b
by lostlogin 4mo ago
The bit the gets me more than the sale price is servicing.
BMWs have a terrible record for needing expensive repairs.
I know you shouldn’t rely on anecdote, but it seems I do.
- irishcoffee 4mo agoIf you take care of the car it’s just brake pads, tires, rotors. Pads and rotors are really simple to DIY. Tires are more expensive than like… an Elantra, but if you’re buying a 60k car you can afford 1.2k in tires… otherwise don’t buy the car. If you get into an accident or let the bmw get into disrepair via neglect, yeah it’s not cheap to clean up. Body work is expensive on any car though, and I don’t have sympathy for people who own higher-end cars and don’t take care of them, they deserve to pay the price for it.
- scheme271 4mo agoIt's more than that though. Any repairs due to wear and tear or whatever, ends up being really expensive. Although you can probably reduce the costs a bit if you get the non-branded OEM part or potentially the same part from another manufacturer (e.g. the toyota supra uses a lot of bmw parts so if the toyota part might be cheaper than the same bmw part).
- irishcoffee 4mo agoThat was my whole point actually, the wear and tear is really minimal if you get regular oil changes. Things don’t just break and need replacing. Tires, rotors, brakes, those wear out. The tires are not cheap, rotors and pads aren’t crazy expensive and super easy to DIY. What other wear and tear things are expensive?
- sroussey 4mo agoAfter 22 years, my z4 has needed batteries and a starter. Recently, there was a problem with the engine misfiring but it was $200. LA, California
- regularfry 4mo agoIf you had bought a 7 or 5 Series at that time, you would not have had that experience. The 2001 7 Series had something like a 25% roadside breakdown rate.
- dmurray 4mo ago25% every journey, or 25% over the lifetime of the car? Neither seems really believable but I don't understand how else you would measure this.
- regularfry 4mo ago25% of cars. It was... not good.
- dmurray 4mo agoSo like... One in four cars would break down at the side of the road before it was otherwise EOL? One roadside breakdown every 800,000 miles or so? That really doesn't sound bad.
- irishcoffee 4mo agoIt wasn’t/isn’t. The reactions in this subthread surprised me. I guess it’s an anti-ICE thing?
- regularfry 4mo agoNot in the first 800,000. Maybe in the first 8,000. They really struggled with reliability early on the E65, they introduced a lot of new (to them) technology all at once.
- nandomrumber 4mo ago[dead]
- carefulfungi 4mo agoOwned a BMW. Had the audacity to use non-BMW windshield washer fluid. The fluid sensor broke; because in a BMW it’s a fancy sensor that is only compatible with specific washing fluids. Sums up my experience with that car. It was nice to sit in, though.
- irishcoffee 4mo agoSo you didn’t RTFM? Or ignored it?
- carefulfungi 4mo agoI admittedly did not RTFM to learn "how to replace the windshield fluid." Lesson learned. Lol.
- ricardobeat 4mo agoMostly just tires and minor maintenance. You're unlikely to need pad and rotor replacements unless you're driving as if you were on a racetrack every single day. With daily EV driving you have the opposite problem - regen means you rarely, if ever, actually activate the brakes, so you get rust on them that you need to clean out.
- seanmcdirmid 4mo agoThe only way I would buy a BMW is if it were an EV. I’m just not brave (or rich) enough to buy their ICEs.
- mjanx123 4mo agoThe BMW inline 6 were the best engines ever. Their inline 4 and other are a strong contender for the worst engines ever.
- tylerflick 4mo agoI assume you’re talking about the n52 vs n20. I’ve had both engines as daily drivers, and they’re both fine. The n20 has a bad rap due to early models failing from a timing chain guides breaking.
- psd1 4mo agoI miss my E39 530 every time I drive. My next 90s Jag is also going to be a straight-six; the V12 is glorious but heavy.
- throwaway2037 4mo ago> BMWs have a terrible record for needing expensive repairs. EVs? That makes no sense. EVs are so much simpler to maintain compared to ICEs.
- nandomrumber 4mo ago[dead]
- IshKebab 4mo agoIn theory they should be, but EVs also tend to be more computerised, proprietary and locked down than ICE cars, so in practice I think it's not as simple as that. For example there was that case of the car that needed an entire new sealed €5k battery controller because it was in a minor crash and blew a fuse. My garage charges 50% more for labour on EVs. I'm sure part of that is price discrimination but I bet part is also because working on them is more difficult. I would not be surprised if they need to pay more for access to the manufacturer's diagnostic tools too, which are becoming increasingly required.
- monster_truck 4mo agoThey suffer from some of the same problem your likely modern fridge does, and then kick it up two notches. In the name of "safety", they have made design decisions such as integrating fuses directly into the very large and expensive control boards and making them non-replacable. Just in case this wasn't enough, they also tend to blow an OTP so that in the event that you have the know how to replace the fuses anyways, nothing will work. Naturally you also cannot just swap in a replacement board, as it needs to go through the same pairing process to the ECU as things like the car doors, which in most cases requires an active certificate/license on the ecu programmer that only dealerships/oem have.
- conductr 4mo agoThis is a company intentionally making sure EVs didn’t erode service revenues
- throwaway2037 4mo ago