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      10-15-2012, 04:48 PM   #27
ptt127
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Drives: 2011 335i
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Bay Area, CA

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Good thread. I think cultural differences play a role in this. My experience working with Germans is that they tend to have a strong belief that their engineering is inherently better. I feel like the Japanese have more of a feeling that they always need to prove themselves.

Also, the Euros that I know are very detail oriented, so materials and fit/finish play a big role in what they perceive as quality. They look at a Japanese car and see bigger panel gaps and lower quality plastics and perceive that as low quality. They also consider themselves smart enough to fix little things like burned out light bulbs and I know someone who worked for VWAG who could not get his German colleague to understand why Americans thought it was such a big deal to change a tail light bulb rather than complaining about it on a survey.

Americans OTOH value a car that works, all the time. Free from defects and trips to the dealership for repairs, and a low ownership cost. To me it's quite clear that the Japanese have better understood this about the American market and that is why they dominate the mainstream. I read an article a few years ago that German companies give their design engineers the last say whereas in Japanese companies, production engineers have veto power. Kinda makes sense.

My own personal experience is that BMW is less consistent than the Japanese. My '99 Z3 was pretty good- a few little electrical faults and the onset of a known issue in which the shifter would not spring back to neutral from 5th. No regrets selling it at 60k miles though they guy who bought it from me has doubled up on that and still drives it. My dad's '07 E90 has 38k miles and zero defects so far. I know two people with nightmare E93s- HPFP multiple times, top mechanism problems, etc. Our new F30 has been ok but only has 500 miles on it. In terms of scheduled maintenance all new cars basically need nothing but oil for 100k, it's just that BMWs sometimes have "unwritten" consumables, like the entire cooling system on the E36 generation

At the same time, we have 3 Honda products, all purchased new, all made in Japan. Between 0 and 1 lifetime defects on all of them, never an unscheduled day in the shop. There is simply no comparison when it comes to ownership costs. Lower purchase price. Less depreciation. Lower long term maintenance costs. We bought a new BMW this time but not to save money.
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