200Q20v

I've always thought that when BMW came out with a turbocharged all wheel drive car I would be all over it. Got a chance to drive one this week (actually a press car from BMW, where the wife works).

My impressions: the car is definitely a well engineered car. Everything just works nicely together as one cohesive package. Handling is great without being unecessarily harsh over imperfect pavement. I can go fast without worrying too much about the road surface. Interior is fairly quiet.

Acceleration feels waaay better than my chipped 200 20v and this 335 is automatic. Cabin is tight, I feel like I'm wearing the car instead of sitting in it. I-Drive is aptly named because the driver ends up saying: "I drive, YOU work that thing"

Favorite features: keyless thingy. As long as it's in your pocket you can touch the door handle and the door will unlock allowing you to get in the car, press the brake and hit the start button. Rain sensing wipers. Remote controlled rear window sun shade.

WTF: can't find the button to unlock the doors from the inside. Sure, you can reach over and pull on the handle and it will unlock, but the doors automatically lock when you start moving.

pedals are STIFF. Very difficult to modulate brake and gas. I find myself jerking to a hard stop at red lights and then racing off at green lights.

Need a feather-light touch on both pedals to drive smooth.

Basically, I really like the car but I can't see paying $40-50k for one. Wife says she takes right angle turns without braking... something she's always tried to do with the minivan only to scrub off the edges of the van tires.

MiB@100-2.3NF-91

>WTF: can't find the button to unlock the doors from the inside. Sure, you can reach over and pull on the handle and it will unlock, but the doors automatically lock when you start moving.

If all doors are locked you need to pull inside door handle twice: first makes door unlock, second actually opens door. Some bmw's have button in the middle console.

Door locks while driving can be re-programmed at dealership.

Calbha

well like ive said with all new cars with 100 bells and whistles yeah they are nice to have but what happens 10 years down the road if you still want to drive it and crap starts breaking down.

two sun roofs! one of mine took about 6 hours to replace the track with a trip to the salvage yard about 30 miles away. 2 of them means 12 hours!

moving headlights! what if they get stuck on one side of the car.

night vision windshield! what if it malifunctions durning the day time.

assisted parking.......uhoh

crash detection.....uhoh

low jack! country turns into a dictatorship. uh uh your not going anywhere in this car.

120 dollars for an oil change and if you try to do it yourself your car wont work! do i get a hot girl nude with that?

even the brand new audi s6 looked like you couldn't access spark plugs without taking out the engine....why is that you say? because the guy at the dealership told me that the 100k mile spark plugs have to have the whole engine taken out to be changed. and im sure it cost a wad up your own spark plug.

now i might be exsagerating seriously just a little bit on this but do you see where im going with this? yeah its nice to have these things but how much luxury do you need. you kind of have to look into the future too if you plan keeping the car for more than 5 years.

MiB@100-2.3NF-91

Any new "complicated" car won't last more than 5 years, even with loads of $$ dropped in it

ColoQuattro

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The change of the spark plugs and other maintenance will never become an issue to most owners. This makes no sense to guys like us who work on their cars. The one single thing in retrospect that I hated about my S-4 40V was that I couldn't even change the oil since it had a belly pan, cam belt change required the front clip of the car to be removed and other major work. God if it were a R-8 think of the cost to fiddle with that thing. These are all cars that are supposed to be bought by car guys.
Even the BMW 128 with the twin turbo 3.0L which is a retro to the 2002 is a mouse trap to work on due to size, BUT the car is affordable.
That's what I love about domestics and I have always loved Mustangs....the quality is not comparable to a M-3 or a RS-4 but general on road performance can be. I have a friend that works for Ford. According to him, Ford's intent (since the first real update of the car in '94 1/2) was to give the owner a basic performance platform they could easily modify as they expected that ONLY 10% of the owners would NOT Hot Rod the car in some fashion. The car performed very well for the time (I had a '95). It was a basic performance oriented platform that I turned into a rocket. Point is Ford gave car guys a "white canvas", and set up SVT (now FRPP) to market hot parts to guys who liked to work on their cars. They also built other cars like the SVT Contour, SVT Focus, SVT Lightning (I owned one of those too), Mercury Marauder many of which everyone laughed at as poorly done domestics that don't perform well out of the factory....but that was the point to to be sold to car guys that would mod.
We all like to work on and mod our cars but it's expensive and not easy because Audi, BMW and M/B didn't intend their design to be modded beyond floor mats, wheels and tires.
Cars like the BMW 128, 335xi, M-3, Audi RS4, RS6, M/B C Series, S Series and AMG are all great performers but can't be modded easily or by the majority of us. They may look, perform and have interior quality superior to the domestic competition on the showroom floor but for performance I would love to have a modded FRPP Mustang with a "cammer" BOSS 302 engine (consertive rating of 380 HP nraturally aspirated)over a RS4 or a RS6 any day (well maybe), mainly because I worked on the thing and was able to transform it performance wise. Not to say that the Foreign performance cars are not nice, but I too have grown frustrated with the new cars, prices and complexity.

RB-200 20v

While there certainly wasn't the factory backed mods, ala SVT, there was and is enough of a following that modding via aftermarket suppliers was/is possible.

I bought my 93 5 speed in 95 and over the years have done dozens of mods [big brakes, Eibach/Koni, intake changes, sway bars, bushings, lighting, guages, exhaust.......] Fun car, granted front drive, never-the-less, fun!

Silver award winner at the national convention 04. Was thinking about waking her up from her winter nap yesterday, will soon.

ColoQuattro

but they are hard to find in good condition with reasonable miles that have not been whipped. That is one domestic that made a good reputation for itself from the get go and as usuall FoMoCo stopped production.

RB-200 20v

Thanks,
It replaced my 83 GTI I bought new [first one delivered to Milwaukeee...and another great car, 100HP but a blast].

The problem, I think, with finding a good used version is you really can't get any money for them [I'd be lucky to get 5k for mine]. So, in my case, it's just worth more for me to keep it then sell it. I suspect there are a lot of folks out there with them, good examples that is, that feel the same.

My daughters are both in college, and while the younger is a fan of it, it's not really a college car.......so, I'll probably keep it until, well, maybe a future son-in-law will be worthy of it, or I'll park it in a storage unit and in 50 years someone will find it and it'll be worth 6k