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Sedans High End Luxury Cars
24700 messages, Last post on Dec 01, 2009 at 12:24 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: tagman (Nov 16, 2006 8:59 pm) 
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Replying to: cdnpinhead (Nov 16, 2006 4:10 pm) Not bad, not bad at all. But is it really that good?
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Replying to: dewey (Nov 17, 2006 4:40 am) 
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Replying to: brightness04 (Nov 16, 2006 10:22 pm)
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Replying to: 2001gs430 (Nov 17, 2006 6:43 am) 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. 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) You wanna analyze the devile in the details? Maybe you should look at BMW's PERFORMANCE ENGINEERING as opposed to Toyota's quality-control engineering. Poor little BMW quality-control engineers ain't good fuh nuttin'. They only put their money where their mouth is with a 4-year warranty with free maintenance and great lease deals, the latter of which has everyone perplexed. Throwing up $14 bil vs $160 bil isn't what I call facts and figures. It is only being used speciously. Get into the "devil in the details" rather than making generalizations with facts and figures. More Toyota worship and sanctimony.
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Replying to: brightness04 (Nov 16, 2006 10:22 pm) With BMW's mere 14 billion, they have managed to engineer some of the best handling cars in the business. Yet, Toyota has that massive warchest and leaves one wondering just how much money could Toyota possibly need to improve the performance of some of its vehicles, and why then does the performance of Toyota/Lexus vehicles not even come close to that of a BMW, even when appropriate such as with the Lexus IS. I'd have to say that when it comes to vehicle performance, BMW is much more capable with its money . . . especially considering the massive monetary difference between the two companies that you highlighted. TagMan |
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Replying to: 2001gs430 (Nov 17, 2006 6:43 am) |
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Replying to: designman (Nov 17, 2006 7:11 am) TagMan
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Replying to: designman (Nov 17, 2006 7:11 am) Okay, here's the difference between "Performance Engineering" (isn't that just design choice?) vs. QC Engineering: individual AMG and M projects typically cost less than $100 million, some only a few million dollars in R&D cost. Give me $100k (heck even $10k), I can make a typical BMW better performing than it is in stock form; here "performing" meaning handling, BMW's forte; BMW has nothing special when it comes to engine output in the overwhelming majority of its cars or weight reduction. QC engineering on the other hand is an entirely different. Making consistent and reliable cars entails massive capital investment in robotics, running into billions of dollars for a platform, in addition to whatever design choices made related to products. It involves process engineering. You can probably see the vast difference in capital requirement between "tens of million" vs. "billions." A billion is 1000 million not 10 million. BTW, I'm not saying BMW is doing it wrong, given the context of its competitive environment. Training workers to accommodate product variation/update is a lot of cheaper than spending billions on acquiring new robots. There is a trade-off however in the end result. This difference in approach also explains why BMW and MB can offer more product variants whereas Toyota/Lexus tend to offer less variants despite having greater volume of sales. Poor little BMW quality-control engineers ain't good fuh nuttin'. They only put their money where their mouth is with a 4-year warranty with free maintenance and great lease deals, the latter of which has everyone perplexed Warranty and leas subsidies are partly gambles based on the interest rate difference between Euro vs. Dollar donominated debt over the past few years. Some of it is just plain old marketting ploy to defend an artificial MSRP; e.g. there is no way the financing arm itself can make money from a deal that entails 1.5% lease interest rate when the short-term borrowing cost is 5.25% in the US and 3.25% in Eurozone. Warranty and lease subsidies can book "sales" up front, but eventually there will be massive write-offs . . . they always do. More Toyota worship and sanctimony. Not really. Someone who worships Lexus in HELC would not be mentioning Toyota.
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