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Sedans High End Luxury Cars
24699 messages, Last post on Nov 30, 2009 at 6:41 PM
You are in the Sedans Forum. Your Hosts are pat & karens
Let's try to define this forum as being limited to luxury performance vehicles where the mainstream version in a typical configuration has an MSRP of at least $60k.
A luxury vehicle with a base price of $59k qualifies because it would typically be bought with some additional equipment, bringing the MSRP over $60k.
Vehicles like the E, 5, A6, M, or GS, even if available in certain versions over $60k, don't qualify because they are cars from companies that have higher end cars in their lineups.
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Replying to: dewey (Nov 16, 2006 3:17 pm) Man is that ugly! Shocking! |
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Replying to: oac (Nov 16, 2006 3:55 pm) The 550i should be one sweet ride. Try it with the comfort seats if you can. Comfortable without being too soft. You can't beat the BMW warranty- all factory recommended maintenance for 4 years, 50,000 miles. If you ever do need help with the BMW, you just press a button and you are blue-toothed to BMW. I have never needed to use it. However, if you decide on the LS460, enjoy it.
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Replying to: hpowders (Nov 16, 2006 5:54 pm) On a not unrelated topic, I see a lot of people (although less now) driving American SUVs who clearly could afford a HELC, I wonder if, in addition to all the other reasons advanced for their popularity, some of the success of SUVs is the perceived rugged simplicity, won't complicate your life with electronic gizmos? |
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Replying to: blckislandguy (Nov 16, 2006 7:02 pm) Talk about being misinformed. Yet I see it every day. The people driving most recklessly are the SUVers. Driving them like BMW 3 Series. Guess they didn't take physics 101.
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Replying to: hpowders (Nov 16, 2006 8:22 pm) Morning moms with the kids on the way to school.  One hand holding the Starbucks, and the other holding the cellphone . . . look!...no hands on the steering wheel!  ... Get outa the way!!! TagMan
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Replying to: merc1 (Nov 15, 2006 9:16 pm) On the flip side most car companies are trying to match Toyota in reliability. BMW has the money and smarts to do it if they're serious about it. Agree with the first sentence, but not the second one. BMW has neither the money nor the smarts nor even the right manufacturing circumstance to replicate Toyota's reliability. BMW is very good at maintaining profit margin, but the overall resource available to BMW is limited. BMW worldwide sales is only about $14 billion, whereas that of Toyota is $160 billion. It takes a lot of raw cash flow to engineer and test vehicle to tight tolerance and high reliability. The devil in the details costs a lot of money to be engineered out  BMW probably can't even afford the army of process and quality control engineers that Toyota has. The overall R&D cost of a platform like the Civic/TSX/CR-V/RDX and Camry/ES/Highlander/RX cost $5-10 billion nowadays. If BMW or MB spend that much money on a platform, they'd have to quit making all other models. The overall R&D cost of ML/R/GL for example is less than $1 billion. That's why there are so many more bugs in the ML/R/GL compared to the higher volume platforms from Toyota and Honda. The Honda and Toyota production lines are much more automated. BMW on the other hand touts "flexible manufacturing," which means more work done by human labor on the production line. It's a completely different approach. I do not fault BMW for making that choice; it's a necessity due to lower volume: what's the point of installing a billion dollar of robots if the whole model is only expected to generate a few hundred million dollars in revenue?? However, that decision does have an adverse effect on final product quality. That explains why the domestics are having better luck than the Germans at improving product quality in the past decade. As much as we like to make fun of the domestics, they are better placed in the market place to emulate the Toyota/Honda success on quality than the Germans because the domestics have the volume/cash flow (even if little of that cash flow translates into profit)
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Replying to: tagman (Nov 16, 2006 2:53 pm) More than a couple MB's probably had wind shield wiper failure in the middle of a down poor, like one of the magazine testers found on an ML; more than a couple 3 series probably had DSC failure that almost flipped the car, like another magazine editor found during a test. Not to downplay the significance of cars catching fire, but 2 out of millions of these two models sold is hardly relevent to the statistics. I will change my tune when one of those buggers catch fire during a magazine test
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Replying to: blckislandguy (Nov 16, 2006 7:02 pm) I've noticed that as well. To me it seems that there are more women drivers of those large domestic SUVs than men. I think they make them feel less vulnerable on the road, as there is a perception that these large vehicles are somehow inherently safer than a traditional sedan. Of course its not actually true, a S-class or LS460 will be unbeatable when it comes to active safety. The domestics on the other hand have a poor track record at that.
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