I'd NEVER have a grin on my face if I had to drive a POS Maxima. Junk.
From Oct 27, 2003 Auto Week:
Hart: Hey, someone alert the torque-steer police, as this Maxima is a major offender. As I stepped on the throttle to merge onto I-75, the car nearly bounced off the wall. I couldn't believe it. ..... I like this car a lot, but the torque steer is enough to keep me away.
Morrison: Torque steer? More like auto steer. This Maxima has a mind of it's own. Like Roger, I, too, almost beaned this baby. There is something terribly wrong with the dynamics here, as the front end bucks all over the place whenever you boot the throttle. ..... As it is, any positive attribute the car posseses is negated whenever you put the power down.
1976 2002 sold in 1981 @ 150,000 miles for $5.00 less than my purchase price. : )
1977 530i sold in 1986 @ 175,000 miles for exactly the price I paid for it. : ] ]
1977 630CSi sold in 1987 @ 122,000 miles for $5,000.00 less than I paid for it, what a beautiful car ; )
1978 530i sold in 1993 @ 220,000 miles for $500.00 less than I paid for it. : ) current 1993 BMW 525i @ 167,000 miles, not one breakdown yet, the prettiest car from BMW yet, and the most reliable. : ] ] Colin
But... of course, the Pro-Germans are right. The BMW heritage is richer than Nissan's, Toyota's, etc. The Japanese may be able to pump out a hell of a lot more rice rockets per year, but they are nothing but meaningless pieces of sheet metal that roll off of an assembly line. Each BMW is a lot closer to hand-made, embodying a sense of passion and of personality within it.
Those who speak of German cars DO speak of lines and mystique, because those properties hold special places within us, yet the others speak with such ineloquent words as "rotting" and "salvage yard" while exalting their gas mileage and reliability. There are TWO different schools of thought here, people... If you want lines and mystique, buy German, gas mileage and reliability, buy Japanese. As the cliche goes, it is akin to comparing apples and oranges.
I have a 1985 BMW 6 series. I can promise you that there is NO Nissan of the same age as my car that has retained the same quality for both the interior/exterior, engine and appearance. I won't deny Japanese durability and reliability, but, that's about where it ends. I have driven the different Nissan's andAcura's and found them all to be quite boring. Japanese generic feel and performance is king in all of their copycat designs. Thinner sheet metal, plastic parts and generic performance is NOT a mark of quality...
Could not have said it better myself. What is a BMW without the killer driving experience? An expensive german car. As for a BMW giving you more back because you invest more, how? Compared to their competition they're;
1) Smaller. Forget the 3 series, the Maxima is bigger than even the 5 series, new or old.
2) Less featured. Put in an moonroof, auto climate control, high power audio system, and watch the cost of your bimmer skyrocket.
3) Expensive to maintain. Check out consumer reports.
4) Not as powerful . . . . . (Yeah, that's right)
What I mean by not a powerful is when you factor in cost. The thread is a discussion between the Maxima and a 3 series, but which 3 series? Is the comparison between a $30K Maxima and the $60K M3, or the $28K 318is? If the comparison was cost wise, then the 3.5 liter 265 hp would be up against the 2.5 liter 184 hp 325is, and you can see how I can say that BMWs are not as powerful. Sure, they have the glory of the 333 hp M3, but that's $60 large for a 2 door coupe. Hey, I'll admitt, it's probably one of the baddest coupes on the planet, but that's the cost of
2 freaking Maximas. Even the more comparable 330i costs at least $5K more than a Maxima, and we're talking a base 330i vs a fully loaded Maxima. If image is everything, obey your thrist and get a BMW. I know the Maxima can't touch it in those terms. RWD is great and the driving dynamics of a BMW cannot be beat, but Maximas, even though they're FWD have alot of fun factor. And, I don't know about everyone else, but on the street, I tend to be able to take more advantage of FWD dynamics than RWD. On the track, RWD all the way, but how often does everyone spend their time there? And even more interesting thing to find out is how many BMW owners actually take their cars to the track. I bet More Maximas wind up on the track than BMWs.
I have a tendency to think that BMW owners are like Hummer owners. They own the vehicle because of it's heritage and what it can do, not so much for what they can do with it.
Where are you looking dude? The BMWCCA and BMWCC are *full* of high mileage smiling bimmer owners.
There are tons of E30, E28, E24, E36 owners running 200k + on thier original engines and loving their cars every day. Lots of them can run 14's in their
4-door (E24 excepted) grocery getters.
Take your Maxima to a BMWCCA driving school some time.
The short answer for me is Yes. And that, as has been well stated here, can not really be answered in a generic fashion. The potential buyer must decide what weight (s)he apportions to each aspect of the whole ownership experience.
FWIW, I would appreciate some elaboration from the poster who give BMW's high marks for "quality" while acknowledging that they are less reliable than the top Japanese makes. If quality of *build* is the point of reference, how does one uncouple that quality from a vehicle's reliability, durability and dependability?
My driving experience assures me that the quality my BMW 3's automotive
*technology* was measurably superior to that of my Maxima. That technology was evident in the feel and modulation of bimmer's brakes; they were, to my experience, superlative. And the handling? A joy - do you remember that BMW ad which ran something like "...your brain tells your hands to turn the steering - the wheels respond like they were evesdropping..." that neatly sums up my experience with that car's steering responses.
But, and here's the answer to your question, in my book, those driving attributes (which, I concede, reflect BMW's engineering excellence) were inadequate compensation for the ownership headaches. To be sure, I'm not seduced by solely by a car's "practical" value; at the time, the 3's mystique was potent enough to lure me into purchasing mine without bothering to test drive that year's model. And I eagerly paid the premium over a more run-of-the-mill machine. I wasn't ignorant of the fact that I could've padded my retirement fund by ordering a chevy hatchback instead of the 3.
My point (and I do have one : ) is that my 3's mechanical fragility detracted substantialy from the total ownership experience. I would hesitate to recommend it as one's sole means of daily transport (this is what I think your car's function will be). My experience revealed the sort of quality shortcomings that I would have found acceptable in a Hyundai Pony or quirky and thus acceptable in something really exotic like an Enzo. For a sedan with upmarket pretensions - it was just plain poor value for the money. If the lust for the kind of driving experience described before encourages me to succumb in the future to the Teuton's allure, I will be acquiring a Bimmer as my family's *third* car so as to spare it the ignominy of being forced to serve as a daily workhorse (a function that its makers evidently do not expect its owners to delegate to it, not with all its superior breeding and all that mystique hooey). My "rice burners" (to descend momentarily to the level of some previous posters' slur) provide me transport which is comfortable (more so than my bimmer) and reliable. They are clearly not exhillarating but my old Maxima and current Infiniti are definitely not Camry-dull. And as a total package, they deliver what BMW will some day regret that they do not.
Excuse the wordy post. Bet you'll never guess that 3 years or so later, I'm still miffed by the chasm between my expectations and the 3's reliability reality. : )
There is a defect on the 99-01 Maximas with the ignition coils that was not issued a recall. Many owners had it fixed under warranty. Costs about $700-1000 to get it fixed by a dealer, or you can buy the coils for about $200-250 and do it yourself.
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Besides that reliability issue, if you get the Maxima I would personally avoid the 2000+, poor resale value and kind of weird styling. There are still some low mile 97-99's Maximas around that have eaten up much of the depreciation cost.
So, like most Japanese car owners you don't want to compare apples to apples? I thought so... Your displacement class/cylinder class would be the
5 series, there of course you would come up short. The 3 series and its 2.5 Liter would be classified in Altima class.
Quality will always be quality and less will always be less. There is the old adage everybody knows. "You get what you pay for". It holds true for all things.
If I need a cheap little econo-box to get around town...I might look into a Nissan...more than likely a Toyota, but for god's sake ,pull your head out of your ass...You are actually trying to convince us that your car is in the same class as what is generally considered the finest sportscars/sedans on the planet ? It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.
FYI, Mercedes, BMW and Audi have been making sports cars, race cars and touring cars since long before Japan even knew how to build a car. They have a pedigree and heritage that is simply non-existant with the disposable Japanese econo-brands. For some people things like heritage, pedigree and mystique mean a lot. It separates our cars from yours and embodies them with a sense of uniqueness, style and pride. Hey, if I had to pay 30 grand (or whatever the new Maxima is selling for) for a car and got the same (knockoff) styling as a A6, I would feel mighty ripped off.
It will take me too long to respond to these posts individually, so I'll just add my comments here.
What it comes down to is that, aside from the 3 series and a Maxima being automobiles, we are comparing apples and oranges. The 3 series BMW is a drivers car, someone who takes the extra long way home from work just to hit that sweet corner, well, because your car can. The Maxima is targeted at the near luxury crowd in need of some nice performance, yet still maintaining leg and cargo space. If we were discussing the G35 in place of the Maxima, then we'd have something to argue over right now, but these are different cars, in different classes.
On a side - Rice burners are those beat up Honda's from 1989 that do a quarter in 18 and change, with a fart cannon waking you up at 3am. I've seen pleanty of ugly, beat up, piece of shit, smoke spuing BMW and Mercedes on the road as well (too bad no one has come up with a name for them yet, or have they?).
New 2000 Maxima, drove 50K miles, was in the garage 17 times. Dealer performance was very bad. Twice had to escalate to Nissan head-office to get a mis-firing problem resolved. Turned out Nissan finally issued their TSB about replacing ignition coils as a result of my car.
New BMW 325i, 2001, drive 70K miles, was in the garage for scheduled maintenance only, - 3 times. Absolutely no comparison. BMW is far, far superior, - in fact both cars are in different catgeories in my opinion.
Much of the hype about high repair costs comes from anecdotal comments from people who either havent driven a BMW, or have driven a poorly maintained BMW.
On the overall Nissan performance, - I had comparably bad performance from a
1998 Pathfinder, and very poor dealer performance. I had this car in 6 times in 2 years for rough transmission shifting into second gear, and was always told it was "normal".The transmission totally failed suddenly at 105,000 KM, and the warranty ran out at 100,000 KM. Dealer thought it must have been a manufacturing defect for the type of failure, - Nissan wouldnt extend any goodwilll coverage even though I had regularly complained about the transmission. Attitude was "too bad", - cost to replace was $4,000 cdn. You can tell why Im not a Nissan fan!
On Tue, 20 Jan 2004 22:19:27 GMT, "WB" wrote: [snipped]
Clearly there are apocryphal tales available for every marque, it's the numbers that count in the end, and Nissan's numbers are better than most.
fwiw, among other marques I've owned Datsun & Nissans since 1971, including
240Z, 280Z, 280ZX, 300ZX, 510 wagon and a '91 Pathfinder. All bought new, all kept for ~ 80K miles each. Still own the rusty trusty Pathfinder, now going on
170K miles.
Although most also new models for their year, not once did any of these cars fail. And #1 son has an '01 Maxima which so far has been perfectly reliable...
/daytripper '00 s4 6spd, which hasn't failed either ;-)
I put any car up to any idiot in a 4WD for snow travel. Most people seem to think the options on their will make up for their lack of common sense. Almost every option on a car is to replace a human action that the general public find hard to master (ABS, launch control and more). All nice options, but nothing stopped faster than my '86 E28 without ABS on ice.
Actually, it probaby wouldn't stop faster than my 330xi, since it has Michelin Pilot Alpine's at all 4, and a driver that commonly drives over 80 days a year on snow/ice. The AWD is actually to get me up my driveways.
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