31st Dec 2019, 17:01

The sorry reality is that most of the German brands of cars are selling mainly through their image and not the actual quality they're supposed to be held in high regard for. At this point the overall quality is below Hyundai. Basically barely at the lowest of low econo-car build quality.

These cars have become the cars bought by middle management type consumers whom will probably lease them for 2 years then trade them on another 3 series. In other words they only need to hold together just as long as the lease lasts. That's why you can go buy a 5 year old BMW 7 series, a car that costs almost $100,000 for under $20k. Why? Because after the warranty runs out the cars become huge liabilities with the ability to drain your bank account on repairs.

I'd say at least every other person I know who buys these cars has major issues with them. A neighbor of mine bought a gently used 5 series a few years back. She owned it for exactly 48 hours before the head lights stopped working. Turns out the lights used a separate ECU system (computer) which had failed and cost over $1500 to fix. She later sold the car. Yet another neighbor has one that seems to get towed a lot when it fails to start on occasion.

My advice? Buy a Lexus. It's basically a fancy Toyota, but it's also not unusual to see these things with 300,000 miles and still handle and drive like a new car.