ttliang

the brand new M3 in my avatar died again for the 3rd time and it only has 2Kmi on it. extremely cold out tonight. friend called about the dead M3. wouldn't start. we thought it was just battery. we rode in my TL all over the place trying to get a jumper cable. finally got one but no avail. hooked it up to my TL but car won't even crank. the emergency service guy BMW hired came and said it's electrical system. his words were "they don't like cold(what the #$@* was that?). seen too many. you think BMW is bad, try a VW". scheduled to be towed tomorrow morning. i really liked that M3 when it worked. i am not here to bash BMW. shit happens (a little too much IMO). it just hit me that i take my reliable cars for granted. feel sorry for my good friend. feel really good about my trouble-free TL.

avs007

I thought BMW's have a 24 volt ignition system? At least that's what my coworker's 850 has.

ttliang

well that BMW service guy's been there 3 times already. he jumped the car up the last two previous times. i had to assume he knows what he's doing.

frenchnew

These are not the first cars sold in North America that are not really suited for the cold and you can bet they wont be the last.

VW Passat of a few years ago, when it got cold, the car would not start and the battery was fine.

VW Canadians dealer were telling their customers who had just paid over $40,000 to get on their back under the car and hit the starter gently with a hammer!

This is really ridiculous with today technology. Can't BMW afford a cold room at the price they sell their cars?

Jesstzn

Thats odd .. I have a 03 Passat .. starts flawlessly even at -15F for over a week ... Never ever heard of that scenareo and I have frequented the Passat forums for a few years now.

Lister00169

Besides the M3's thirst for synthetic oil (as per my friends experience), I thought the current generation M3 was relatively trouble free?

I hope all goes well in the fix, but have you considered crying "lemon"?

mclarenf3387

An M3 is not really a cold weather car. Its generally a nice day/2nd car vehicle.

Pure Adrenaline

iTrader: (2)

I remember reading an article in Motor Trend a while back. I can't remember the name of the place, but it's where every car company goes to test their cars in a cold climate. BMW even has their own testing facility nearby.

The kicker? Honda is the ONLY major manufacturer to not test their cars there. Ironic, eh?

Even with all the mods, my car has never failed to start right away and we see 10-degree weather here all throughout the winter.

ttliang

it could be. funny you mentioned that. when he called BMW, i was beside him and half jokingly yelled very loudly "i am not kidding, i'll lemon this car if you don't come right now." turned out BMW checked for electrical problems already last time but found nothing wrong (scratched the console too. still waiting for parts to replace). i told him to document all these just in case.

mio

I can feel it...

caball88

my bmw owning experience was an electrical nightmare as well. it was mechanically sound but anything and everything that had to do with electrical components drove me nuts.

Pure Adrenaline

iTrader: (2)

I'm not trying to bash on BMWs, because I like them and all, but man... after all the horror stories that my friend told me, I'm afraid to get one.

He worked at Erhard BMW in Bloomfield Hills for about 2 years. He told me about this one particular brand new 740iL that came in. It had serious electrical problems that the dealership could not figure out. They even called Munich and they sent out a tech from Germany to look at the car, after it sat on the lot for 2 months without any real solutions. Even a specialist from Germany couldn't figure out what was going on, so the car was bought back by BMW. If that was the only case, then I would say it was isolated and not blame BMW in general. But man, the stories he told me... it was insane. Granted, they are much more complicated than most other cars, so it's kind of expected, and to an extent, understood, but I wouldn't want to be in a situation where I'm stuck with some serious problems with no solutions.

JetJock

BMW's are nice...but notorious for needing to see the shop often. Great fun car but I'd never own one for a "daily" driver car. It would be my toy...never see rain or snow....and probably sit in the garage most of the time. Right now, my TL is my toy...I can't afford a M5 which I really want, and I've got a '94 Honda DelSol for my daily driver aka "beater" car. It's just great......gets good gas mileage, never breaks, and is cheap to maintain. With 120K miles...the only major expense I've incured was a timing belt change at 90K. Otherwise...it's just the usual oil/filter stuff.

invincible569

My friend also tells me the same thing with his 2 BMW's.... and just recently.. he got rid of both and said he will never own a BMW again.

Like you.. it also makes me feel good about my TL.

mamboking

So much for so called "German Technology". I have Jetta and while it hasn't been the best of cars, it is not that bad either. But I can tell you this, the majority of the problems I have had were due to defective BOSCH parts. That's the company doing the crappy work and unfortunately, VW and BMW have lots and lots of BOSCH parts in them.

Brettg

Reliability on all german cars is down the tubes.
My 2003 passat was a total piece of crap, but it had no problem starting in cold weather. Germany gets lots of very cold weather, and i am sure they set the cars up for that, its just the quality of the parts they use on the cars, made in eastern europe I suppose, to save money.
My VDO made fuel pump only lasted 27,000 miles, and lots of other sensors and so on failed in under 2 years, made for VW by some european companies....

To keep the costs down (from the cost of building cars in Western Europe), they must arm twist the part suppliers to cut costs and go with the lowest bidders...

They make great cars, I loved my Passat, but they should cost more (I would have paid more) for better quality parts.
The cars have nice paint, nice leather, nice options, are screwed together very well, use good steel, its just the parts quality that sucks.

VW is rated 34th out of 37 brands for reliability. I think BMW is low, as is Mercedies...

The average American car is now much more reliable then the German cars.
(not that they are very good cars)

Brett

Brettg

I dont think VW uses many bosch parts, most of the VW parts I had fail were not made by VW or bosch, vdo made the fuel pump, the temp sensors were some other company, all the coil packs that failed on the 1.8t motors were NOT made by bosch, but some low bid company...

Brett

DFBRL8R

the emergency service guy BMW hired came and said it's electrical system. his words were "they don't like cold(what the #$@* was that?). seen too many. you think BMW is bad, try a VW".

Don't like cold? Doesn't if frickin' snow in Germany?
http://weather.msn.com/local.aspx?we...ns=wc:GMXX0128

Dlifter

Yeah i also had a 03 BMW before I bought the TL and the main reason for the switch was cause of the costs to repair the damn thing. I love the car to death, and honestly is probably one of the best cars I have ever driven, but in the end its intent isnt for a daily driver. Oh well, fun while I owned it, very happy with the TL now

Actuary

In contrast, I am happy to see several "Made in Japan" parts under my hood.

tiguy99

I know this is totally unrelated but damn who's the girl in your sig?

Back on topic before I drool myself to death, isn't it true that most sports cars like BMW aren't too good after 40,000 miles especially if driven hard like most M3 owners do?

ttliang

that's exactly (well almost) what i said to the guy. I think it's BS to blame the weather anyway..

the tow truck guy showed up this morning and i happened to run into him on my way to work. i asked him if this is a common occurance for BMWs. he told me yes at least for here in jersey. he said not just M3 but all kinds of BMW big and small. he's an independent tow guy contracted with all local luxury car companies. my friend is going to update me on the situation. i'll post later to let u know. again, i am not a BMW hater. i, the other day, was just thinking about buying his M3 maybe few years down the road for fun when he's tired of it. think again...

BayshoreAcuraNY

not to go against what your friend said but, techs only see the cars when they have problems, so of course you'll only hear bad stories. my wife is an office manager for a dermatoligist, i only hear about cancer and genital warts (gross) and all that kinda crap. tchnology only makes for more problem..... manual seats never have motor problems....but they suck so no matter what you do your screwed!



edit note..... the other reason they cost more is the money exchange difference..... euro is stronger....... thats why the 2nd gen tl was cheaper then the 1st

chill_dog

I've never known anyone with a BMW that didn't constantly have problems, particularly electrical. Good luck with it.

Hybrid

Anybody that knows any details of lemon laws wouldn't take that threat seriously. In most states, the dealer gets 3 tries to fix a problem before the lemon law process can start. It sounds like the dealership may have had only one chance so far? It also has to be a significant problem, and this no-start condition should qualify for that.

Lemon laws vary by state, so research is required.

It's kind of funny to watch people on various forums threaten to "make the dealer take back their car under the lemon law" for things like panel gaps or paint problems or rattles. First, those types of problems would generally never come close to falling under lemon laws, plus a lot of people think all they have to to invoke the lemon law is go to a salesman at the dealership and insist they take the car back. (As if applicablity of lemon laws is up to the car owner). (Note: this paragraph not intended as a flame here).

avs007

I had a friend that owns nothing but BMWs. One time, he had an X5, a 530, and a 330, parked in his driveway all at the same time. The only problem was, that they weren't his. They were all loaners, because all 3 of his BMWs were at the dealer at the same time, for electrical gremlins.

ttliang

you know BMW and dealers are smart. they "blamed" on different things each time officially. so it's not the "same" problem anymore. i really don't know that much about lemon law to it's hard to say.

Lister00169

In CA, it's not about the number of attempts at fixing the exact cause of the problem (ex: bad tranny, bad differential, etc.), but the number of attempts to fix the actual problem (ex: jerking while accelerating, missed gears, etc).

If you have the same problem (in your case electrical faults) over and over again and they do different things to fix it (more than 4 times), then it can be considered a lemon.

frenchnew

GM arm twisted alot of suppliers in the late 80's and early 90's with the help of Ignacio Lopez who went to work for .... VW.

Here is an Abstract found on the web;

This case explores one of the most controversial managers of the past decade, José Ignacio Lopez de Arriortua, the former purchasing czar for General Motors Corporation. The case highlights the 1992-93 period in which Lopez headed GM's purchasing in North America. During this period he is credited with saving GM approximately $4 billion in expenses, and potentially causing irreparable harm to the long-term supplier relationships key to GM's future competitiveness. The case also describes the revolutionary Plant-X design of modular consortium manufacturing which was Lopez' dream, finally fulfilled in the 1996 start-up of Volkswagen's Resende, Brazil truck and bus manufacturing plant.

He is a company's QC control department nightmare, and worst for suppliers.

During his reign at GM, several suppliers went out of business because they were forced to lower their prices and GM was their only customer. GM at the time pocketted the extra profit.

I come from a longtime GM family but had a major feud with GM in 2000. Now even my dad drives Japanese.

frenchnew

I am talking mid 1990's.

My brother and one of my friends were technicians for one VW Dealer and I had another friend of mine that was a service Manager for another VW dealer.

The comments I posted were remarks from them at the time and they even added that I should avoid VW at all cost during these days.

Best regards from Montreal (we know what cold is here in Quebec, with area's dipping below Minus 45 F in the winter).

frenchnew

mclarenf3387

Which dealer due you go to? (you mentioned being from jersey)

JMK is pretty good. They host tech days for the BMW CCA and all the techs stick around while we're their. Most of them seem to really know their stuff.

And the lemon law in NJ is pretty similar to what Lister described.
http://www.lemonlaw.com/njstatute.html

ttliang

bot it at open road. but car is at morristown right now (BMW's choice).

last time they blamed it on the radar detector. this time they are saying it's i-pod adaptor. I was saying "give me a break". they said the i-pod drained the battery so dead that we couldn't even jump start. dealer couldn't even j-s. they charged the battery overnite and will see what happens today. they are not ruling out anything else yet and will check. i called BS but i'll advise my friend to take out his 4000Watt radar detector and 2000W i-pod just in case.

cM3go

This thread is screaming Car Talk:
https://acurazine.com/forums/car-talk-5/

Since we cannot move threads across major forums, this thread is