On a tangential note to this thread: there was a thread a while ago on tips on how and when to buy a new car. Which I can’t find because the search engine helpfully refuses to allow me to use words like “new” and “car” in a search. Anyone able to dig it up?
I just think the average Mini buyer doesn’t look a whole lot like me
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Also, the dealer here sells Coopers and BMWs from under the same roof.
What happened?
Should’ve gone to Sewell, next to Love Field. Worth the longer drive.
I sat in the QX56 the state fair last year. Damn nice vehicle, but too big for the parking garage I’ll be using come November. The FX’s are, with all apologies to those who own one, too girly for me. And I can’t bring myself to spend more than $50k for an M. I’m afraid $36k was about the limit of my comfort zone. Oh, well, the lease is up in 48 months.
Jamie Kitman of Automobile magazine infamously noted that the new Mini was “at long last, a car openly intended for gay people.” Lots of letters over that comment, as I recall. Mind you, the guy does own a Mini himself and has had nothing but positive things to say about the car’s dynamics and its overall concept.
Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that the salesmen you met were assholes.
Setup: I learned driving on a 1982 Toyoto Corolla 4-door. Rear wheel drive, skinny little tires. In snowy winters, on the side roads leading up to my home, I would constantly pull skids to turn corners, on purpose. Just before the corner, I would gas up slightly. The rear wheels would slide out of control (to the correct side, cued by my steering just before), then I would let go of the gas, turn the steering wheel towards the direction of the skid to gain control of the car, and wait for the car to straighten itself out. Easy, with practice.
Accident day: Snowy winter, 1st winter with an Acura Integra 4-door. Front drive, fatter tires. I tried to show off to my girlfriend, so I gunned the car, then turned the corner & let go of the gas. Well, the Integra just skidded straight forward. It did not turn in either direction. I stared at the car, wondering what to do, and Bang! I hit the front left wheel on the sidewalk. It was around $3000 in damages, plus I was stranded without a car for that Christmas. She still married me later on, anyways.
Bonus: Later I found out that she drove an old Toyota Celica. In Nova Scotia! They get more snow than us in Ontario, so she totally knows what I was trying to do… She turned out to be more of a demon driver than I was.
P.S. The correct way to pull out of a FWD skid is to turn the car & GUN the GAS. There’s no guarantee that it will work, either. I never bothered to practice that, and now with the G35, I don’t have to!
Ah, I see another who hates the new beemer lines. I think the last good design was the 03 or 04 models. I’d rather get a 230 Benz than a 3 series just on looks these days.
I also think that BMW took a wrong turn in the styling department these past few years, though this doesn’t seem to have hurt their sales any. I wonder if the correlation is due to my inability to afford any of their cars?
That said, have you seen how the new C-Class looks? Ugh. I know the European designers have been hamstrung by the EU Pedestrian Safety regulations (hence the blunt noses we’re seeing a lot of these days), but the 2008 model resembles a Chinese knock-off of a Mercedes sedan.
Yeah its not great but not that bad, at least not as bad as the beemers. :) 05/06 aren’t too bad.
Thread Resurrection.
Anyone own (or otherwise have lots of experience) with the 335i? It’s a relatively cheap upgrade (about $3k, holding other options constant) from the 328i but adds tons of power. 0-60 in less than 5 seconds seems crazy-exotic fast to me. In general, how much of BMW’s reputation for high maintenance costs is deserved? (although if I lease the thing for three years, as I’m considering, maintence costs aren’t an issue.) Do I really need more than 230hp—are the turbos more trouble than they’re worth? And shouldn’t I really do the responsible thing and buy a Toyota Yaris instead?
I drove the Lexus 250 and didn’t like it: very luxurious, but underpowered and heavy. Have not driven the G35 but plan to. Anyone go G35->BMW or vice versa and have a strong opinion either way?
I realize that if I buy a BMW my mom and Phil Stein will both lecture me on practicality.
BMWs do cost a lot to maintain.
Turbos are generally hassle-free for 100,000 miles at least, unless you bag the crap out of the car. However, I really recommend you stay up to date on oil changes. Turbos put oil under incredible stress.
Yeah, you should get a Yaris, but a Yaris won’t have a trail of gold diggers chasing you, begging to be used.
I traded in my M3 for a Prius. The BMW (2003) had a lot of little things starting to go that were very hard to isolate and fix, and when I had only 4000 miles left on my warranty I decided it was time to get something else. Since the new M3s aren’t out for a couple years I decided to get something more practical (I really need 4 doors).
The M3 was a great car, but the maintenance costs and general flakiness* after almost 4 years was just too big a concern.
- High pitched intermittent squeal, presumably a loose fan; crackling right front door speaker that was already replaced once; door moulding had to be replaced 4 times (!) due to glue unsticking; recently started stalling unpredictably, often at very bad times (like trying to merge with traffic)
skedastic: my wife tells you to do the right thing & get a SMART ForTwo. I would tell you that the V6 is better to drive compared to any 4 cylinder car. It’s always nice to be able to pass someone smoothly on the highway at any given speed. (I’m all about smooth, not so much speedy.) Finally, I have a different friend who is normally a Benz freak, who suddenly switched from an E-series to a G35x for about 6 months, then switched back to a C-series. He can’t really articulate to me why he didn’t like the G35x…it seems to be a lot of little things that bothered him.
Hey! I’ve heard a friend of a friend (a.k.a. random stranger) encountered something similar with a BMW 3-series (or an M3?), but it’s a brand new car. The first stalling happened after 2 months, and over the next it happened another 2 or 3 times. The dealer has no explanation for this problem. Very scary. Stuff like this & other anecdotes are making me wonder about German automobile quality in general.
Kao, was your friend able to give you any idea on how Infiniti’s 4WD compares with Mercedes 4Matic? I assume he must have driven on snow in those 6 months.
I’ve no experience with the 335i, but the magazines love it. Performance is close to the previous generation M3, but the car is supposed to be easier to live with for day-to-day driving. Of course, if we listened to magazine editors, there’d be a lot more Ford Focuses and Chevy SSRs on the road…
Sorry Enduro, his Merces don’t have 4Matic, before or after. I also don’t have 4WD, but I don’t believe in the “4WD has better traction than 2WD in snow”. Instead, I think that people with 4WD mistakenly believes that they will be safe in their car, so they drive in winter as fast as they do in summer, and skids out anyways.
Oh wait, I have a story to tell here. I used to have a Honda CRV, which has some weird “automatic 4WD” that kicks in when its computer thinks you need it. I took it to an unplowed parking lot and tried to make it skid, to practice steering myself out of it. Let me tell you, the CRV neither behaves like a RWD or a FWD when skidding…it’s RANDOM. I tried letting go of the gas & steer in the skid direction (skid-counter move for RWD), CRV decides to go straight & ignore the steering. Then I tried steer away from skid & gas (skid-counter move for FWD), and CRV starts to spin. I will basically die if I skid on a CRV, because I won’t know what to do!
The G35 is RWD, with traction control. The traction control reacts faster than I can take my foot off the gas pedal. So, I trust traction control more than 4WD.
No need to tell me that, as I’ve crashed twice on the snow, once in a 4Matic E-class, and another time in a Grand Cherokee. And by “crash”, I mean slow, unspectacular, understeer into a curb that nevertheless causes plenty of damage. In both cases, the vehicles were shod with all-weathers, which only grip so much. Even so, the Jeep could usually handle most things thrown at it, except I was younger and was being a bit stupid that day (Whee! I’m Juha Kankkunen!).
You’re definitely right about traction/stability control being the better safety net than just trusting in 4WD. Still, I appreciated having 4Matic (even in its horribly complex and expensive-to-maintain 1993 guise) keep my rear end in line in the rain and snow. A change to proper snow tires would be best, of course, but this is more than most folks are willing to do, especially on the west coast. If you’re driving in Vancouver and it starts snowing, watch out!