On a recent episode of Car Talk I heard a phrase that stuck with me. You were commenting how every BMW has an evil twin Bimmer vrs Bummer. I must admit I pushed my fiance into the BMW 2012 X5 5.0 he is now taking back to the shop for the 10th time this year. I thought it would be bigger and thus safer since he had 2 bad accedents in the 3 months prior to the purchase. Also, my 2004 Honda Element is a rough 6 hour ride with 2 adults 2 dogs and 2 cats. My fiance seemed to love the car especially after our comfortable 2 trips to the beach last year. One mile or two after the dreaded 50,000 mile warentee was up the Bummer arrived. Engine malfunctions, weird noises, and now it sounds like it’s crying when we get out of the car and shut her off. Not to mention I ripped open the right rear tire turning into my synagogue. My Honda takes that curb like a champ! Not to mention that it cost $400 for one tire for his car. My fiance Samson is a big swarthy guy. I sincerely thought this BMW X5 5.0 was a good choice of vehicle for him. Now we are talking about test driving the Nissan Leaf. Has the Bummer car I made him buy pushed him over the edge? Can a BMW devotee change his karma? In the mean time I’m driving him to the BMW shop in my Honda Element, and then for a hair cut.
Sincerely,
Delilah
A youthful co-worker of mine who was always very dependable to be on time for meetings for years drove an older Honda Civic. Then he decided he wanted a new car, so he sold the Civic and purchased a brand new VW GTI. Soon thereafter we noticed he’d be late or even a no-show for work meetings at least once a week. After a while we asked him what was up, and he said he kept having flat tires. And it wasn’t a puncture, it was simply he’d go over a bump, and the tire would go flat. A problem which he never had with the older Civic. And hence the being late for meetings. It seems the low profile treads on the GTI weren’t as bump-forgiving.
I also had golf-friend who purchased a BMW. He said it was pretty reliable. But I noticed after he did that, the going-golfing routine was for me to pick him up at the BMW service center and he’d come w/me to the golf course in my Corolla, as it seemed like anytime we’d go golfing, it was also time to take his car in for routine service. It’s a compromise, performance vs reliability.
The BMW is an expensive car with lots of high technology and sometimes these cars don’t do well when the warranty expires. New technology sometimes takes a few years to sort out and that might be the case here. Perhaps a Toyota Highlander would replace it and it seems Toyota and Honda do a better job incorporating new technology into their cars.