BMW's Reputation

marcopolo said:

You know, reading this forum, you'd think many of the people on it were led at gun-point to buy their BMW bikes. I belong to a few BMW bike forums and this is the worst -- in fact the only one -- for its level of negativity, whether it's the product, the HQ move etc., etc. Do you guys ever "listen" to yourselves? It wasn't always like this, but it sure has become rather off-ptting of late. I know I can easily solve that -- and I do -- by spending a lot less time around here. I mean, who wants the constant carping, whining, smugness and the like?

Click to expand...

.... as a new guy here I haven't seen it yet... but I do know that this is my second Beemer and I regretted getting rid of my last GS and couldn't wait until I had another one...

I'll try not to be negative

jconway607 said:

I'm missing this one. What are the people who are irritated with BMW's obvious fall from grace in the reliability department feeling guilty about?

Click to expand...

Those people are a miniscule minority, and likely a bit hysterical.

The guilt is simply in owning a motorcycle--any motorcycle--and in this case about the most expensive one. They are obviously nothing but expensive toys and our society has lots to criticize about that and lots of people can't help but listen. You don't see Porsche or Ferrari owners racked with guilt and complaining about time in the shop. The saddest thing I ever read is "had to ask the wife." And the stuff about "economic transportation" is delusional. Motorcycle forums are a psychologist's gold mine.

There is no "fall from grace," as BMWs were never more reliable than they are now. It's just the "older we get the better we were syndrome" that assigns legendary reliability to the old ones. They weren't.

Now that was well said!!

lkchris said:

There is no "fall from grace," as BMWs were never more reliable than they are now. It's just the "older we get the better we were syndrome" that assigns legendary reliability to the old ones. They weren't.

Click to expand...

Maybe it is that the competition became much more reliable than it once was and BMW hasn't kept up enough with the rising expectations in that department to maintain a lead over the competition. I strongly suspect that a '71 airhead is much more reliable than a '71 CB450. I base this solely on the leaky turd of a Honda I once owned and the amount of time I spent working on it. I also think that gap (if there is one) is much less than it once was and probably won't really show up until you have a lot of miles on a bike and things like top end components start showing wear. BMW continues to push the envelope on innovative features, but the engineering and production dollars seem go toward the candy that can command a premium price vs nukeproof reliability that is hard to charge extra for. Customers also want light weight machines that perform better than the rider and have every imaginable electronic aid to help them ride better than they are capable of. I'm sure if there was a large customer base with sufficient disposable funds willing to shell out $15-20k for a perfectly reliable machine, BMW would put the time in to design and build it.

As I see it, bike design is one thing......Integrating sourced parts to make the bike perform as intended is another. Calling one bike a piece of crap or unreliable without seeing many of them (bikes) in the same failure is a bit narrow along the chart.
The recent shock problem on the Wethead was a failure of a sourced part. Yeah it stinks when it's your bike but BMW did as good could be done when the problem arose.
No one gets it right all the time. When I buy a product, I feel I should look at the track record of the company and go from there.
OM