37 vs 335i

[zozoka1212]

Hey boys and girls,

I thought you guys might enjoy to read this. I ran into an automotive forum and well just read it and you'll see. The guy have some skills in his hand.

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What a fantastic review of the G37! Entertaining, enlightening, and insightful.I’ll apologize for a long, rambling post. So, either pop open a cold one and settle back for a loooong read, or skip this rant completely. These are also just my own personal thoughts; there are few absolute “rights” and “wrongs” or “goods” or “bads” with cars, we all just buy what we like and enjoy it. I spent a lot of time looking at the 335 and G37 before deciding to buy the latter. I’m a hard core car nut, have owned 96 cars in the past 33 years. I am totally brand agnostic, have no loyalty to any particular one. I have restored, raced, and worked on many cars, and look at them in ways that most people don’t (I also tend to be a perfectionist, and want reliability and fair value as well as being fun to drive). I have owned a couple of BMW’s, and looked long and hard at the 335, but got the feeling it might not be as much fun to own as it is to drive. The 335 is an absolute blast to drive, as are most BMW’s. It is a great combination of performance and luxury. The company should also be applauded for offering manual transmissions in many of their models at a time when most companies don’t. However, BMW has also done a fantastic job of marketing itself over the past 20 years. Where do you think the whole “ultimate driving machine” mantra came from? BMW itself, with brilliant, persistent marketing. The company has set standards for skillful product placement. So many movies and television shows over the past two decades have BMW’s in them whenever “upscale, affluent” lifestyles or “beautiful people” are depicted. BMW itself now touts the “BMW lifestyle” in their marketing. Their efforts have been phenomenally successful. Most people think “BMW” when they think “upscale” car, or “upscale” lifestyle. Just like the cigarette advertising of the second half of this century, a whole generation – us – now has BMW successfully branded on our psyches as the “it” car to have. Most people that are – or want to be – “upscale” want to have a BMW (like, it seems, most of the population of Southern California). For many years BMW richly deserved that reputation. The 2002, which started the whole legend, was a fun to drive, beautifully engineered, reliable, reasonably priced car. Unfortunately (also IMHO), BMW’s today are morphing into a different animal. After 20 years of aggressive marketing, BMW now seems to be more focused on maximizing profits. I took a close, critical, objective look at the 335, and it was apparent to me that the company had gone through it with a fine toothed comb looking for ways to cut costs. I know people in the car business, and they admit that the companies look at things and ask, “will people still buy it for the same price if we do this”? It’s simply business - minimize costs, maximize profits. With the 335, it struck me that BMW applied this with a vengence, with things like flimsy windshield wipers. Some interior control knobs that would shame a Hyundai. No limited slip differential, absolute sacrilege in a car with sporting pretensions (but probably not noticed by most drivers on a profiling trip to the local mall). No spare tire (saves $50, and most people will still buy it and pay the same price as if it had one). It even lacks an oil dipstick (a BMW dealer told me the most accurate way to measure the oil level was to drain it, measure it, and then re-fill it. So, if the electronic oil level readout shows low, there’s no way of knowing if it’s truly low (and therefore you have to get a tow), or just electronics on the fritz). Save $5 here and $10 there, the next thing you know, it’s $1,000 more profit per unit, an impressive accomplishment in the razor-thin margins of the automobile industry.More worrisome to me is the overheating problem with the 335, which suggests some serious thermal management issues. First Road & Track experiences an engine overcooking its oil and going into limp mode after a few gentle laps on a track. Then, one sees ominous reports of engines grenading themselves showing up on the BMW forums. BMW seems to have cut the corner a bit too closely on this one, and it’s probably not going to be solved just by adding an oil cooler. The engine seems to already maxed out, stressed to its limits to squeeze out as much power as it is generating from its displacement. It is truly impressive from an efficiency perspective, but worrisome for longevity and reliability. The 335 seems to have been designed to make owners dependent on the dealer, and addicted to expensive – and not easily substituted – maintenance. To wit: composite brake rotors, which cannot be turned and must be replaced at every brake job (20,000 miles or so), to the tune of $740. Those windshield wiper refills which you can’t get anywhere else? $48. I got quotes for oil changes from two dealers: $130 and $200. For an oil change! BMW’s brilliant marketing also promotes “free maintenance”. Which, of course, it isn’t – the cost is simply built into the price up-front. The “free” maintenance also gets you oil changes every 15,000 miles (= 3 oil changes during the warranty period). Even a company that builds engines as wonderfully as BMW cannot repeal the laws of physics and metallurgy. While synthetic oils certainly last longer than conventional, this is also impacted by the higher operating temperatures that are used to extract better efficiency – and as a result, shorten oil life. This is especially true in a turbo engine like the 335 (turbos actually get red hot in operation). After 6,000-8,000 miles of this kind of thermal stress, even the best synthetic oil may have its shear properties degraded. The number of early engine failures is already suggesting that thermal management is a problem – and oil temps and lubricating properties are critically important. Bottom line, 15,000 mile oil changes will get almost any engine through the warranty period without any problems, but I would hate to see what the bearings look like after 100,000 miles – or own the engine once it’s out of warranty. Some people have even commented that they see the 335 as a “lease and return”, one to have fun with but that you wouldn’t want to own once the warranty has expired. Which is the culmination of BMW’s shrewd marketing: lease their cars, and once the warranty and lease are up, lease a new one. Like a smart drug dealer, get the customer hooked, and then keep them addicted and regularly coming back for more. It is a brilliant business strategy to move a product from a periodic capital purchase (buy a car every several years) to a continuous income stream (lease payments for life). It maximizes and stabilizes the company’s cash flow. I take my hat off my (balding) head to BMW for figuring out how to do this. If I worked for them I would try to do the same thing.But I don’t. I am a consumer. I am lucky enough (because of years of hard work) to be able to afford any car BMW makes. But I didn’t get here by flushing money down the toilet unnecessarily (well, at least not too often…). I know it’s one of my own pet peeves, but I don’t like being led down the garden path to help line someone else’s pockets. Even the maintenance costs have become a secondary message of BMW’s marketing – the cost of the “BMW lifestyle”. Some people defend BMW’s lack of reliability by saying “you own a BMW for the drive, not the reliability”, and “you shouldn’t buy a BMW if you want a reliable car” – also straight out of BMW marketing. If you built a car that was more expensive but less reliable than the competition, what else would you say to keep the addicts coming back?There have been many comparisons between the 335 with the Infiniti G37. IMHO, the performance of the new G37 is not significantly different from the 335. As one magazine review commented, neither car seems to be able to flat out run away from the other in a track. The performance specs seem to be within a few tenths of a second of each other, probably within the range of car-to-car variability and driver skill. A $1000 driving class would no doubt make a bigger difference in who would be faster around a track. What the G37 does seem to have, IMHO, is more robust construction quality, and likely more straightforward maintenance – for thousands of dollars less. While some may sniff about a BMW’s superior “driving dynamics”, the reality is that most people don’t know what they are, and rarely experience “driving dynamics” on the way to a SoCal mall. BMW builds some great cars – the E46 series M3 is an absolute jewel, and a terror on the track. But, IMHO, Infiniti may be the truer successor than the 335 to the BMW legend started by the 2002: a solid, straightforward, reliable, comfortable, high-performance car at a reasonable price, that, more importantly for me as an enthusiast, is more engaging to drive, more involving of the driver. This may be hard for some BMW loyalists to contemplate, but, like the story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, just because most people think something, doesn’t mean it’s true.All car enthusiasts should be saluted for having the passion and cajones to enjoy driving in a society and age that seems to be devolving towards automatic-transmission homogeneity and mediocrity. We live in a free country, and we are all free to buy (or lease) anything we like, as long as we can afford it (or convince a finance manager that we can). Whatever floats your boat, go for it, and enjoy it. I know many people consider it sacrilege for me to not unquestioningly worship at the altar of BMW, and I’ve been lambasted before for some of my blasphemous comments. Some people on other forums have posted less than fanatically religious comments on the 335, and were crucified for their irreverent profanity. But, we are all just expressing our opinions, we’re just talking about cars. Post-purchase cognitive dissonance is a classic human emotional response (that I too am often guilty of): rationalize and justify a decision after the fact, even if it means ignoring objective data. While hard to quantify, it seems that the biggest difference between the G37 and 335 may well be how important it is for someone to have the blue and white propeller badge on their car. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I thought it was pretty cool.

zozo

[Kendahl]

This is a comment on a review of the G37 which recently appeared on http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com. The review was quite favorable to the G37.

I agree with the comments except for the one about transmissions. It doesn't do much good for BMW to offer manual transmissions when dealers refuse to stock them.

Instead of copying the entire comment, it would be better to create a link to it. That will save space on this forum and avoid the possibility that thetruthaboutcars might get testy about reprinting so much material.

[zozoka1212]

The reason why I did it copy instead of link cause I wasn't sure if it is a cometition or not for nico. I guess it was a mistake what I won't repeat.

zozo

[adren77]

hey Zozo, Was this posted on the BMW forum? If so, I'd love to see their responses, so post the link anyways!

[zozoka1212]

It is from an independent website and there was a response from a bmw owner. That's how it should be.

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carnick - thanks for the ultimate post about the ultimate driving machine. Although I bought the 335, I have no illusions about keeping the car into old age as I have no tolerance for the outrageous maintenance costs and reduced reliability that the BMW offers as standard equipment. And the G35/G37 are damned close to the mark.

What made the decision for me however, was that I know the 335 will spend 3 or 4 weekends a year at the track at the expense of new rubber and warranteed brake components. It is smaller and easier to park than the G35 yet is still livable for those few times that I want to put four people in the car. It gets amazing fuel mileage for a 300 hp car, returning 20 mpg or so around town and 25-26 on the highway. But it is equally evident that the money BMW puts into their cars is all at the platform level. The interior “design” meets neither the market standard of the Acura, Infiniti or Lexus (although the sport-package seats are perhaps the best in the group), and there is no denying the places where the car was de-contented in order to meet their profit objectives. And in order to survive as an independent manufacturer, they’ve simply got to produce larger profits than Honda, Nissan or Toyota because they are not keeping the lights on with higher volume vehicles. Thus while remaining a wonderful sporting machine, they must also do what Porsche has done so well - to appeal to those who have no clue what the machine is about, but simply want the blue and white roundel on the front of their car.

I did find it interesting listening to the then CEO of BMW in an interview on NPR. When asked perhaps five years ago about his feelings on the Mercedes foray into their turf with the AMG sub-brand, he said “Mercedes-Benz is not our competition. Toyota is building the finest automobiles on the planet today and we will either find a way to compete with them or we will cease to exist as an independent company.” I don’t think they’re building German Toyotas (thank God!) yet, but I do think they are working very hard to do so and understand the game.

The tales of overheating 335’s have been all over the forums, yet I have seen any number of them on the track this year (four weekends since March in CCA events) and none has gone into limp mode. For those automatics which were delivered without oil coolers, BMW will install the oil cooler if asked, and I’m sure they figured that the average gold-chainer who parades the car around the mall would never push the car hard enough to need the cooler in a country where “fast” on the freeway is 85 miles an hour. A 335 could likely do this, sans oil cooler, for 200,000 miles and not break a sweat.

I’ve also seen some Infinitis at the track and they also seem up to the task. As an enthusiast, I wouldn’t take either car off your wish list. And if you plan to keep it for six or ten years, the Infiniti is likely a far better choice. Woe to us that we have such choices; even the new CTS now looks a likely suspect if you’re looking for a manual transmission sport sedan.

Having said that,

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here is the link

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.c...view/

Kendalh sorry to hold your kb's back.

This thread is getting big. It is like 200 kb.

zozo

[ArEs23x]

oh wow i refuse to read all of that ...but i believe every single thing there just cuz it came from you

[zozoka1212]

Heheheh

Keep your answer short because we going to put the server full. Need more space.hahahahah

Hey I see you got the title

Congrats

I think the whole thread was awesome in that forum. No bashing. So I decided to show to every nico friend here how well they behaved on that forum and first post I got is ....well you can see that up there.

funny

zozo

[ArEs23x]

why thank you sir... I didnt even notice I had it until you told me lol