Vauxhall to "move upmarket"

prowla

On the BMW vs whatever question, I have had Ford, Toyota, Nissan, Vaxhall, Chrysler, Audi, and one or two others.

I now drive a 51 plate BMW 5, and it is genuinely better than any of the other makes. Being the age it is, it hasn't got some of the more blingy features like built-in sat nav, Bluetooth, and it's even got a cassette player (CD autochanger in boot), but I would be perfectly happy to keep that car for a very long time.

patman99

BMW's reliable ?. Just try telling that to all the 3/5/720D owners who bought cars fitted with the M47 engine that.
The cam chain tends to fail after 80k & lands the owner with a bill of up to £10k for repairs.

MSN did a survey of several 100 garages to see which vehicles they did the most repairs on & BMW, Audi & Mercedes all ended-up in the bottom 10. Even VW only managed 20th.

GolfBravo

colino wrote: »

No, because it is better designed, more robust, repairs more easily because it is better put together and when it is all done, is a better car in every aspect than a "white goods" throwaway.

German TÜV (Eng. Technical Inspection Association) annual vehicle reliability report is based on actual vehicle inspection results - in Germany, all 3+ years old cars are required to undergo mandatory inspectations every two years (very strict inspections BTW, on average 1 out 5 cars will fail their first test, and if it fails the re-test it is subsequently scrapped).

The report is published yearly by Auto Bild magazine (Auto Express sister publication) and you can also view the test results here - it is in a database format so you can compare cars to other manufacturers/models. You can select a car model and it shows the major fault rate (%) and overall rank.

I'm sure you'll find it interesting, especially comparing BMW 5-series to Opel (Vauxhall) Insignia/Vectra.

2 to 3-year old cars

4 to 5-year old cars

6 to 7-year old cars

Re: "BMW engineering excellence and innovation" - not many people realise that BMW is one of the largest outsourcers of automotive engineering. BMW's in-house engineering is relatively tiny, comprising mainly of temporary contract staff (employed by employment agencies to save on tax and pensions). Majority of engineering is outsourced to Infosys, EDAG, AVL, Bertrandt, and even some work is done by IAV (part owned by VW group). Each year BMW employ only a handful of engineers - in fact most of their marketing/engineering/manufacturing/accounting staff are outsourced to external companies these days, ie. Mini factory in Oxford is 60% agency staff. And the very few who get a full-time engineering job at BMW are simply good at managing outsourced engineering programs.

But I must admit their PR, advertising and perceived quality are the bees knees.