Don't be a like that. Anyone who lives in the snow belt and has driven a RWD BMW, knows that they are quite poor in the snow compared to a FWD/AWD Audi regardless if they're sporting Nokians or not.
The X wagons are extremely nice and one would be fool to purchase a non-wagon over a wagon.
I've driven a number of RWD cars in Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and Alaskan winters and I can tell you that, while AWD is better, RWD is perfectly driveable even in bad snow as long as you have good snow tires. Up here in Alaska, there are (for some reason) a lot of old W123 diesels driving around and they do just fine. As I said earlier in the thread - its the people with AWD that are actually more likely to get stuck through overconfidence and driving too fast.
acidfast7 said:
lol
at this thread degrading down the ******* from Audi to Subbie
Nice cars, but not even comparable to an Audi. That said, I'd avoid an Audi like the plague. Overengineered like all of the Germans. Friend has had two, both of them were only a few years old with low miles, and they were both nightmares. Stories of Audi's stubborn reluctance to trace down electrical problems on in-warranty cars (because they know they can't find the problem) is a real turn off too.
A hilarious dichotomy - dismiss the cheaper car out of hand, and then claim that the more expensive car should be "avoide[d] like the plague". I think both halves of that bit of advice are ultimately unhelpful.
The whole "overengineered" claim is a stereoype that is only partially true. There are plenty of American (i.e Quad 4) and Japanese (i.e. Hondas with four wheel steering) designs that are over-engineered and suffered poor reliability as a result. There are quite a few Audi designs (such as the 1.8-2.0 turbo engines) that are pretty bulletproof.
Buy German only if you have a very steady career and don't mind $1000 surprise repair bills. You will seldom if ever see a sub-$500 parts and labor bill. IME, they simply aren't worth the extreme price premium and inevitable downtime, especially if this is your Monday morning car that needs to start and needs to get you to work at 7 AM.
As a counterpoint to your story, I have several friends with German cars, and none have gone through any of the horror stories you allude to. One Audi owner I know does have a car with a lot of problems - but it's an early Audi 80 with well over 300,000 miles on the clock, so it is not really fair to use that car as an example. Another friend of mine has a late 90s A4 V6 and it has been quite reliable. Still another friend used to drive a 7-Series. He got rid of it because routine maintenance costs were high, but it never had breakdown issues. I know several other people with Audis, BMWs and Mercs, and while they complain about maintenance costs none of them have a particularly
unreliable car.
You know, after driving/riding in a few Audis/MBs this Xmas break on the autobahn, I've come to the opinion that they're really wasted in the US.
<snip>
Basically, these cars are (over)engineered for much more aggressive situations than in the US. I wouldn't want to drive a Subaru for two hours at 120mph (and I owned a Saab 9-2X, which was somewhat good in the snow with ****** all-season tires for 2 years).
Yes, and revolutionaries in Libya mounted ZU-23 anti-aircraft cannon in the back of Toyota Hilux pickups and use them as technicals, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't enjoy the reliability and toughness of Toyota pickups here in the States.
Likewise, the advantages of the best German cars (sharp handling, powerful engines, luxury appointments, good safety features) are not "wasted" just because we don't regularly cruise at triple-digit speeds. 0-75 sprints on a US interstate are nearly as demanding as your hypothetical 0-100 sprints.
In the end, they're much better cars (a hell of a lot quieter and easier to drive constantly at high speeds ... more relaxing for a quick trip over the Alps to Italy for a cheese/wine pick-up), but as always you have to pay to play, and they'll nickel-and-dime you (but when you pay 100€/130USD for a tank of gas, a 500USD repair isn't so much) to death if you consider that they'll be wasted in the states.
For what it's worth, I did just have the timing changed for 384€ including labor (4 hours), which is actually LESS than it would take to change it on a boxer-4-cyl in a Subaru.
And, the person that said you should buy a BMW should be shot in the head unless they were referring to a 3/5-series AWD (X drive OR any used version with an X in the model number) wagon, which are quite rare in the US.
They
were referring to the 3 series Touring, as a matter of fact.
If it was up to you, apparently we'd all be driving Chevy Malibus or Ford F-150s, since anything better is "wasted in the States"? Good grief.
Again, I think the over-engineering claims are stereotypes that are partially true, but definitely not
generally the case - and not limited to German cars either. The German cars are expensive luxury cars - they are always going to cost more, on the whole, than more plebian brands. However, people who claim that (for example) Lexus and Infiniti models are cheaper to run than the German cars are either misinformed or flat out fibbing. The same goes for other luxury brands such as Volvo, Cadillac or the recently departed SAAB.
The timing belt job on a 4cyl Subaru runs about $600 in my experience FWIW.
I'm not trying to sell Subarus, or any specific car for that matter. I probably won't buy another Subaru myself, since life is too short to buy the same car twice. But they are good cars overall, and while they might not excel at cruising at 120mph for hours on an autobahn, they are adept at driving up steep snowy drives - and that
was a major topic of this thread.
As a sum up - I think all the brands we discussed are good candidates, depending on what the buyer decides he or she wants. I reject the claims that German cars are all unreliable and expensive basket cases or that they are "wasted" here by virtue of being too nicely built. They
do cost more money to buy and run than a non-luxury/near-luxury car like a Subaru though, and that needs to be taken into account by any prospective buyer.