Originally Posted By: Foch
My experience has been with Toyotas and Saabs; both I find easy to work on. But with Saab now dead, my wife's next car will probably be an Audi or BMW...
It is interesting you have experience on Saabs and Toyotas, what do you find as the design philosophy differences between the two? I always owned Japanese cars with a few US ones. I found those to be built along the same design more or less which is probably indicative of the close relationship between the manufacturers over the years.
However, when I bought my BMW (used) I found the design thought process completely different. It has taken me a while to get my head wrapped around the whole thing, it is not the same as working on a Toyota for example. Everything is different (and more complicated IMHO). Another thing - some parts on the BMW look to be built like a tank and yet fail way before the more fragile looking Japanese counterpart. I agree that BMWs are waaaaay more complicated in my opinion. But I have a bent towards uncomplicated cars, so that might just be my personal preference getting in the way. I tend to want 4-cylinder cars with manual transmissions, and without digital instrument panels and power-operated anything. I stay away from laser cruise controls and anything else that has $1000+ components that are just waiting to fail.
Take for example the cooling system on my 530i. There are a total 7 hoses, the engine driven water pump, an electrical “auxiliary” water pump, an engine driven cooling fan, and an electrical fan. Plus three temperature sensors. And a three-tube heater core. And the radiator of course. And a coolant expansion tank, all of which fail at about the 125,000 to 150,000 mile mark. None of which ever failed at 250,000 miles on my Sienna.
I guess that doesn’t help you much on your original question. I’m just not a big fan of superior German engineering I guess, although if you ask me which one do I prefer driving there is an easy answer ;-)
