GinoGT

Not a bare bones car in general, just a S-class, 7 series, or A8 without the cost and complexity of a bunch of electric tech. The basics: power windows, locks, keyless, nice stereo and a GPS....no electrically folding headrests, iDrive, lane monitoring, less than 7 types of traction control. Same big, powerful, comfortable German land yacht, less HAL9000.

Malloric

Why does he even bother fixing it then? Or why does he buy it in the first place. The car drives perfectly fine when the night vision fritzes out, or the navigation, or the proximity locks and lane departure warnings, or heated/cooled massaging seats. They already offer the car with and without this content, in case you weren't aware?

The other half of the eqaution is the stuff that actually effects the driving directly. Go drive a big Benz with and without ABC. Big difference. Unlike much of it, ABC is (was?) an option... as was the air suspension the fails regularly and costs thousands to fix when it first came out. You can't really get rid of this stuff and have the same big awesome German sedan, because the customization of suspension and throttle, the active body control, the 5,000 sampling a second traction control that is also tied into the suspension to give a butter smooth ride that doesn't resemble a barge on the high seas.... all those are integral to the driving experience.

TheDonEffect

Agreed. I would love an M3 without all the fluff and unobtainium.

Saki GT

You're correct on the time without the car, plus, he gets loaner in the interim - its what breaks and the expense to repair it that has him looking to sell it before the warranty is out. The radio went out, and that would have been $6k to replace out of warranty because its so tied in to everything. There was also this miniscule piece of plastic in the fancy unfolding cupholder that broke so it was stuck just dangling out of the dashboard, and it was something like $200 to replace it. The trunk has a little handle that pops out when you open the trunk so you have a clean surface to pull down on (there is also the pull inside the trunk you can grab), and that was another couple hundred to fix after it stopped retracting. Then there's the self-sealing doors, and one of them stopped sealing properly - nothing had to do with driving capability, its was just dumb stuff that needed to be fixed.

Its not the amount of tie without the car, its paying so much for a car that is supposed to be a great car to drive, and not being able to listen to music or have it looking ghetto with parts hanging out of it. Mercedes was always the engineered car, so I can see these baubles on an MB, but I wish BMW didn't get as mixed up in that game as well - its really getting hard to buy a pure car from it anymore.

CKit

But he probably lost more than $10k in depreciation per year.

That'll cover a lot of repairs.

He's probably going to get another car that will also depreciate $10k per year.

Maybe it's a ploy to keep people buying new cars.

Like that gum commercial where they have to kick his ass to get him to spit out the gum...

If it works too well for too long, who is going to trade it in?

sam_spider

You don't buy a 7 series, S class or an A8 for it to be stripped down, I don't see why so many of you can't understand that. They are the flagships of each brand and as such are available with every option possible, you don't have to get all the options, I know my S class doesn't have all the option boxes checked.

I do enjoy my messaging seats though

sparrow

Your seats send emails and txts msgs?

sam_spider

Yep and they do massages too

Onehots2k

HAHA! You beat me to it.

rnye

You also have to remember the majority of new BMWs/Mercedes are leased.. They are owned for 2-3-4 years, then traded in for the next 'latest and greatest' - completely destroying their resale value and eventually giving the companies bad names/reps for costly repairs on eventual electrical/gadget failure.

Thats why an 7 series can be had for 50% of MSRP when its two years old. Same with the S class and A8. Now the LS460 on the other hand... not so much - and it can park itself. While the toys might be fun when new, the cars will seem dated very quickly IMO. I still prefer cars like the E38 7 series. The fact I can have a mint 01' with low miles for under 15K... well that doesn't suck either.