[irishcoffee]

If 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]

It'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]

That 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]

After 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]

If 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]

25% 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]

25% of cars. It was... not good.

[carefulfungi]

Owned 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]

So you didn’t RTFM? Or ignored it?

[carefulfungi]

I admittedly did not RTFM to learn "how to replace the windshield fluid." Lesson learned. Lol.

[ricardobeat]

Mostly 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.