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      08-02-2018, 06:49 AM   #58
Stepback3
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Drives: Access by BMW
Join Date: Feb 2014
Location: Middle TN

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I've looked heavily into this subscription service and I live in the Nashville area.

The key factor for me is time. I hate taking cars to the dealer or anywhere for oil changes, new tires, warranty repairs, recalls or anything else. It's a pain in the butt. As someone who likes to drive cars but has very little skill in fixing (or even diagnosing) problems, the idea of "leave it to someone else" is very appealing to me.

The "hey, this car is bothering me now, please come take it and give me another one" sounds awesome. And then you add in the fact that you can swap between a convertible or X3 and it becomes even more appealing. Another thing you can do is pay the difference between the tiers to upgrade for just a couple of days. I would do that in a heartbeat to take an M4 to the mountains for a few days.

That said, this is still too expensive. Even though I pay cash for cars (never lease/finance) the difference in cost is staggering. I built a calculator where I add in all the costs of ownership (including insurance, tires, registration fees, depreciation) and the subscription still comes out too expensive even with the revised pricing.

Both the Mercedes of Nashville and BMW of Nashville that are providing these subscriptions are owned by Sonic Automotive and utilizing Clutch technologies as their backend. The Mercedes started with a C-Class tier that is $1,095 per month and it's interesting that now BMW has introduced a tier at the same price. You know they are sharing information back and forth with each other about what's working and what isn't. Based on my conversations with both dealers, there aren't many takers yet if any. In fact, the BMW dealership actively sold my friend against the program by saying "you could lease 2 cars for less..."

I'm going to hold tight and wait and see how the pricing changes.

I recently sold my 335 and my next car will either be a M-Sport 440 or M4. I'm considering signing up for 60 days just so I can experiment with a bunch of cars over a short time period and get a feel for what I like and what I don't. But, beyond that, I'll wait until the prices (hopefully) drop again.
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