Disappointed and Discouraged in BMW

Ralph Nader

Motodan said:

Isn't Ralph Nader now President of the Corvair Car Owners of America Association??? Surprised he never followed up with books on Pinto, Vega, Yugo, Explorer and Audi and others.

Click to expand...

Ralph never rode a 1972 Kawasaki 750 H2. If he did you would never hear of Corvairs being bad handlers again. Or possibly never hear of Ralph again.

We were all falling over ourselves for a Kawasaki 900 ZI after having soiled our pants with those H2's with their "knife in the back handling".

Wayne Koppa
Grayling, MI
#71,449

wkoppa said:

Ralph never rode a 1972 Kawasaki 750 H2. If he did you would never hear of Corvairs being bad handlers again. Or possibly never hear of Ralph again.

Click to expand...

No, but he had GM nailed dead to rights on the initial design of the Corvair. They did indeed change the rear swingarm axle design to a two U Joint axle that solved the problem and eliminated the oversteer. . The book also clearly illuminated how 10 cents per vehicle translated to millions in profit for GM.

I like Corvairs. GM not so much.

My two cents

BMW is out to sell NEW bikes! They don't make enough money selling just replacement parts for old model bikes. They could care less about the bikes that are out of warrenty. They are no longer a BMW problem. BUY A NEW BIKE and we will care about you again. This was told to me by my local dealer when BMW went to their current boutique dealerships.

BMW caters to the people who trade their bikes in every three years. This is exactly what they want. They don't make ENOUGH money unless they sell NEW bikes!

I agree with the first author of this thread, I would be VERY disappointed with a bike which has sub 50k miles, throwing two major failures. THAT to me is unacceptable. I could care less If the bike had 150hp, ESA, Antilock brakes, cruise control, digital fly by wire throttles, ad nauseam. IF I have to worry about it breaking down for no apparent reason, I am unhappy.

For all of you crying to "buy new!" I ask what are YOU going to do with your old bikes when the warranties are up?

It must be nice to have the money to purchase new bikes every three years. Or buy a BMW just because it is a BMW, BMW just loves you. Keep the BMW flag flying. You have the money to spend on new bikes go for it who cares about the guy who buys used! Who cares if BMW can't make a bike that will be reliable past 36K miles three years. YOU don't, you can afford to trade in a bike evey three years. Good for you!

You sit and throw stones at a person who bought a used bike expecting to ride it without problems and the engine blows up. I saw nothing in the author's thread which said the bike had been improperly cared for or that he had abused it. OF COURSE his PO knows how the bike was cared for and granted poor service could have led to the problems the author had.

I PERSONALLY think BMW just doesn't care to make a reliable motorycle. Trendy yes, high performance yes, cutting edge yes, relaiable no.

A person who purchases a USED bike should get what they pay for. If I bought a BMW with less than 50K on the odometer, I expect it (if it was properly taken care of) to last another 50K. Lesser name vehicles do it all the time. St.

disappointed

Stephen, You might want to return to the dealer you spoke to for some clarification. Generally speaking, dealers make little money on the sale of a new bike. The money comes from the service department, the parts department and post new bike accessory sales. Just curious, did your original advice possibly come from one of the two FORMER dealers who were located nearest to you? Or maybe speak with a dealer who is still open and doing well like MAX BMW or BOB'S BMW to see how they manage to stay healthy and open.

Friedle

Former Dealer

My former local dealer who is now retired was the one who told me to buy a new bike if I wanted service from them.

STEVENRANKIN said:

BMW is out to sell NEW bikes! I PERSONALLY think BMW just doesn't care to make a reliable motorcycle.

Click to expand...

Of course they're out to sell new bikes. That's kind of obvious, right? As far as not building a reliable motorcycle is concerned, that would be a bad plan over the long term and impact their ability to sell new bikes.

STEVENRANKIN said:

For all of you crying to "buy new!" I ask what are YOU going to do with your old bikes when the warranties are up?

Click to expand...

Keep riding it. I bought two new bikes from that dealership that closed - twelve years apart.

I think there's some people at each manufacturer that try to balance that out quantitatively. If you're old enough like I am, you remember back in the 60's and 70's where car manufacturers were accused of "planned obsolescence." I remember my Dad saying that he never kept a car past 100,000 miles because they wouldn't last. Now that mileage point is nothing. Buyers demanded cars that would be reliable and the manufacturers responded.

On the other hand, if your car/motorcycle never breaks down...why replace it? (Besides wanting something different.) Cars are getting to the point where I think the R&D folks must be really scratching their heads trying to come up with something new and different to make their cars appealing. Both to get you to replace your old car, and to differentiate themselves from the other products on the market. Motorcycles are right behind them.

Does BMW purposely build a motorcycle that lasts just past the average time the first owner has it and the warranty expires, with the bike breaking down on the next owner when there's no warranty any more? I don't know. I do feel the trend in both cars and motorcycles is to make the vehicle seem so complicated to work on, that the owner takes it to a dealership instead of doing any work themselves. As they say, follow the money.

Here's something I've noticed in the past year. An analogy can be found in the personal computer. When they first came out, each was unique and different. Prices were very high. As time went on, they became more and more a commodity...an appliance that really was not much different from one brand to another, and the prices plummeted.

Now look at what has happened in the motorcycle market. Especially since the latest European emission standards came out. Throttle by wire has become commonplace. With it, so has things like ride modes. ABS and traction control used to be something special. Now virtually all the new bikes have something like it. Put up a list of features of the new Yamaha Tracer 900 GT against something like the BMW R1200RS and you'll find the differences in features to be few. KTM has features like cornering ABS, which BMW has too. The features of some of the KTM bikes are also about the same as the BMW equivalent bikes have.

So are motorcycles becoming a commodity? Will we see the differences between one make and another to be like comparing keyboards? I know that's a stretch, but I'm just wondering where the market is going.

Chris

For your consideration, you can still buy a simple motorcycle that will do all you want- if you want.


.......Repairable by sheer ingenuity.



OM

18 pages devoted to what exactly? Makes me wonder what the reaction would be to a really bad situation.

dmftoy1 said:

As far as BMW customer service calling back to say he's not covered, they're in a no win situation, if they didn't respond to his letter then the complaint would be that they never responded.

Click to expand...

Right!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

PGlaves said:

Ah, the good old days. Transmissions locked in a single gear due to a little broken spring; frequent alternator rotor failures; acute wheel spline wear; once a year or 12k mile clutch spline lubes; missing circlips; wheel bearing races that spin in the hubs; diode board failures; GS driveshaft u joint failures at 30K miles; dissolving carb floats; shredded carb diaphrams; etc. Boy oh boy those were "reliable" bikes but only if you worked on them frequently. But they were indeed the best then available.

Click to expand...

Yes you are right Paul, but they were failures that most of us could fix and they were not in the $2k-3K range.