Best Of

Has BMW lost its grip? It used to be the other way around.

Their drivetrains are still very good- particularly the inline sixes paired with the ZF HP8. I was turned off by the Lego/Minecraft exterior design language and an interior styled to wow the rubes. As I've mentioned before, I took a long time BMW employee for a spirited drive in my C43 and he remarked that if he'd been blindfolded he would have guessed that it was an M Car from BMW's high water mark in the '90s.

For me, the E46 was the pinnacle of the 3 series but the E9x was no slouch either. The latter had just enough analog left to make it fun. Both handled near perfect to me. The F30 was a great drive train in search of a chassis and that's when the design and quality of the interiors started going downhill. After owning several 3 series, an X1 and an X6, the brand is not even on our radar anymore. We gave a token look at the X3 when we got the Q5 but were really turned off by the dealer experience (high pressure, high volume feel) and the price compared to the Q5, which was admittedly aggressive at the end of the year.

I don't view them as sports sedans anymore and in the uber competitive CUV market, there are just better alternatives for what you get for your money. As noted the styling is a mish mash and that's just being kind because my real assessment wouldn't get posted.

After an afternoon of outlet shopping, I pulled our Camry in between the Highlander and the Tacoma. I turned to my 16 year old son and said to him; "never in my life did I think I'd ever own 1 Toyota, much lessthree of them, especially a Hybrid." I used to think Hondas and Acuras were the pinnacle of reliability and BMWs were fantastic driving vehicles that were more expensive than "regular" cars, but attainable.

Has BMW lost its grip? It used to be the other way around.

Their drivetrains are still very good- particularly the inline sixes paired with the ZF HP8. I was turned off by the Lego/Minecraft exterior design language and an interior styled to wow the rubes. As I've mentioned before, I took a long time BMW employee for a spirited drive in my C43 and he remarked that if he'd been blindfolded he would have guessed that it was an M Car from BMW's high water mark in the '90s.

For me, the E46 was the pinnacle of the 3 series but the E9x was no slouch either. The latter had just enough analog left to make it fun. Both handled near perfect to me. The F30 was a great drive train in search of a chassis and that's when the design and quality of the interiors started going downhill. After owning several 3 series, an X1 and an X6, the brand is not even on our radar anymore. We gave a token look at the X3 when we got the Q5 but were really turned off by the dealer experience (high pressure, high volume feel) and the price compared to the Q5, which was admittedly aggressive at the end of the year.

I don't view them as sports sedans anymore and in the uber competitive CUV market, there are just better alternatives for what you get for your money. As noted the styling is a mish mash and that's just being kind because my real assessment wouldn't get posted.