Ah… Lunch time. TG, back to the original question.
The later models 7 series and 6 series have been plagued with electrical gremlins. The issue with these cars is (and the direction that many car companies are going, which imho is completely the wrong direction) is that they they are putting way too much electronics in things that shouldn’t be electronic to begin with. And that’s really bad news in terms of a preowned car…
Case in point. All late model Bimmers automatics incorporate I-Drive. Your shifter is fully electronic, your parking brake is fully electronic, your throttle is fully electronic. It’s a real cluster*f. As a shifter, you get a joystick looking thing, which a “p” button on top to put it in park, you push the left button and push forward to put it in reverse, and you push the right button and pull it back to put it in drive. I’m surprised some senior citizen wouldn’t accidentally put the thing in the wrong gear, since it really is easy to do. Why the hell did they do this is beyond me…You can avoid this just by buying a stick, but good luck finding a stick on a 7 series or 6 series, or for that matter most 5 series.
Then there’s the parking brake. It is set by pushing a button and released by pushing a button, again fully electronic…If you forget and leave your lights on, and drain your battery, and need to roll your car out of your spot so your jumper cable can reach your buddy’s car…no problem……. Take out the special tool in your trunk, open the special access door in the trunk, and insert the tool into the special access door to manually release the parking brake cable, following the instructions on page X of your owners manual that describes this procedure.. Come on, is a simple parking brake lever with a real cable, THAT low tech that it had to be replaced with one of these electronic gizmos? ???
The there’s the complete integration of your navigation, climate control,etc on a single electronic bus…
These “electronicfication” of your car components poses two major problems after warranty.
1) Most things are electronics that break are too complicated for your independent shop to diagnose and repair. So most likely, you will have to go to the stealer for dianoses…
2) Second, most electronics cannot be repaired. The entire board is replaced and just swapped by the dealers.
You simply won’t find aftermarket electronic boards/etc. It will come from BMW (or the likes), and you will bend over to have those things replaced (repair isn’t an option in most cases). This is different from things like replacing a throttle cable, or replacing a filter, or a physical shifter, in which you probably can find aftermarket parts that are more affordable.
3) German car companies suck at electronics
Put #1-#3 together…Enjoy your new headache…Out of all colleagues and friends relatives that have kept a german car longer than 4-5 years, you hear the problem over and over again. “Drivetrain (engine/transmission/suspension) is great, no problem. Every time I go to the shop it’s because some sensor malfunction, some board malfunctioned, etc….” And the number of problems seems to be exponentially correlated to the more money you spent on the car.
There’s no surprise if you read reports like the latest consumer reports, you would think Audi, BMW, and Mercedes are aggressively competing for the title of the most unreliable cars (only bested by Chrysler)…
So far, I’ve been lucky. Because in all my vehicles, I usually get them with as few electronic options as possible so there are less things to break. I even opted out of a sunroof, since in some cases they’ve exploded too or open by themselves. (One of my audi’s did that…when it was raining and the car was locked ). But again, for me I have a considerably higher pain tolerance for something German than I would say most people would.
End vent… I think I just made enemies with the BMW salesman that you were talking to…
Regarding cost of “normal” parts, comparing Audi/BMW/Mercedes…Parts for Audi will be more readily available, because of their widespread platform sharing with VW… Routine maintenance items for my Audi I stock myself are cheaper than I can find for my Acura of comparable quality, for instance. Stuff that I cannot find aftermarket, I usually raid a friend’s junkyard…One can never have too many ECU boards for instance…. Unfortunately, BMW and Mercedes don’t have as widespread platform sharing so it’s an issue…
I found this guy in san diego, however, to have really good prices
