02-15-2009, 03:07 PM
So few people who own BMWs new will have the car at 80k miles.
The general consensus for this, and things like oil changes every 10k miles, seem to be that manufacturers have embraced the disposable automobile culture. It seems very likely that while cars may be engineered better, changing the fluids 3-5x less often will have long term effects. So why doesn't it matter?
For the most part, people who are going to "buy another BMW/Audi/etc" will have already done so before they ever see any reliability issues from these practices. If your market doesn't have any perception of problems, you can keep on selling your cars without any real impact on brand image. There may very well be a rash of unreliability in 2nd and 3rd owner vehicles but by then they're out of warranty and no longer a liability to the company. Besides, if someone has to come to them for a new tranny or more cars end up in the junkyard in the long run, what's the bad news for them?
The general consensus for this, and things like oil changes every 10k miles, seem to be that manufacturers have embraced the disposable automobile culture. It seems very likely that while cars may be engineered better, changing the fluids 3-5x less often will have long term effects. So why doesn't it matter?
For the most part, people who are going to "buy another BMW/Audi/etc" will have already done so before they ever see any reliability issues from these practices. If your market doesn't have any perception of problems, you can keep on selling your cars without any real impact on brand image. There may very well be a rash of unreliability in 2nd and 3rd owner vehicles but by then they're out of warranty and no longer a liability to the company. Besides, if someone has to come to them for a new tranny or more cars end up in the junkyard in the long run, what's the bad news for them?
'76 911S | '14 328xi | '17 GTI | In memoriam: '08 848, '85 944
"Here, at last, is the cure for texting while driving. The millions of deaths which occur every year due to the iPhone’s ability to stream the Kim K/Ray-J video in 4G could all be avoided, every last one of them, if the government issued everyone a Seventies 911 and made sure they always left the house five minutes later than they’d wanted to. It would help if it could be made to rain as well. Full attention on the road. Guaranteed." -Jack Baruth
"Here, at last, is the cure for texting while driving. The millions of deaths which occur every year due to the iPhone’s ability to stream the Kim K/Ray-J video in 4G could all be avoided, every last one of them, if the government issued everyone a Seventies 911 and made sure they always left the house five minutes later than they’d wanted to. It would help if it could be made to rain as well. Full attention on the road. Guaranteed." -Jack Baruth