[yoavm]

Isn't the world filled with crap being sold in crazy amounts purely for marketing and branding? It seems to me like the only surprise is that somehow, generally speaking, the car industry had some correlation of cost:quality until Tesla came about. Other industries (I'm thinking fashion/food) had lost that correlation long ago.

[Infinitesimus]

Not really until tesla - Mercedes has been excitedly shipping creaky piano black plastic for years and I'm sure there are many other brands cutting corners to reduce price. (Porsche doesn't seem to care which is good)

[buserror]

My BMW X5 just was driven back to me yesterday after nearly 3 weeks away for 1) a puncture and 2) a recall of some sort. 3 weeks because they decided run flats would save them money, and also got rid of the garages courtesy car fleet, also tyre sizes which are near unobtainium and never in stock anywhere.

This is my second X5 G05, and this one is definitely of lower quality than the first. Removed bits here/there, replaced aluminium parts inside with coated plastic, replaced leather with synthetic-like thing and plenty of other cost cutting markers.

Don't tell me 'oh don't buy another one' as demonstrated by this article (and others), they all do it to pretty much the same degree, all you can hope is not to run out of warranty before something mind bogglingly expensive breaks.

[toss1]

Sad to see. I had an X5 from 2002 with manual 5-speed transmission (had to search hard), and it was excellent. Still somewhat regret trading it in after 287,500 miles, with very few issues. The only issue was that the brake calipers would start to drag slightly and warp the rotors, but I discovered that it was because I was using them too lightly; occasionally doing some serious braking (not quite as hard as bedding new race pads) was enough to get >100k miles out of a set of rotors & calipers. Similar with an E36 that I used for track days & time trials.

I found it really sad to see that Mini (owned by BMW) and BMW are pushing hard on run-flats. Hard NOPE from me, as I drive a good amount in fairly rural areas, and driving 50mi from a random point (the flat-driving range spec of a run-flat tire) still leaves me at a random point with no service. And the quality is just gone way down, as you've noted. Too bad.

[rad_gruchalski]

BMW X models are special. Manufactured in the USA. I’m driving an X3 now. Front carpets disintegrated after 500km. BMW cars built in Europe (non-SUVs) are of a much better quality.

[hef19898]

So, the problem was unavailbility of the tires? Not good, but not necessarily a quality problem, or do I miss something?

[yoavm]

True, though the article talks about much more serious stuff than the quality of the interior plastic.

[andsoitis]

According to Consumer Reports, Mercedes-Benz scores second last in reliability amongst car brands.

Lexus/Toyota being the most reliable.

Tesla is middle of the pack at #14 and some surprises (branding?) include Volvo at position 25.

Source: https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-s...

[aaomidi]

Predicted reliability is such a stupid measure imho.

[hef19898]

Aslo, this list is based on owners reporting everything from nuissances to serious stuff. That alone is highly subjective, and we didn't even get into the root causes for each reported issue...