Do bright car paints get annoying?

[Steve Williams]

They lost me as well. I will never buy another BMW

 

[JackD201]

When I was deciding to get modern and sell the e46 in anticipation of the e92 M3, the looks of the latter made me balk. I ended up keeping the e46 and jumped the fence to Mercedes getting the maniacal C63 AMG saloon instead.

Where I still love BMW is their Diesel engines. Fantastic fuel economy, boatloads of torque and almost as smooth as petrol engines.

 

[caesar]

When I was deciding to get modern and sell the e46 in anticipation of the e92 M3, the looks of the latter made me balk. I ended up keeping the e46 and jumped the fence to Mercedes getting the maniacal C63 AMG saloon instead.

I never liked most Mercedes models, as I found them biased too much toward luxury. I do love the the CLS and SL models because they are works of modern design . And because I love modern design so much, Audi has really grown on me recently. Audi seems to have taken mantle from BMW with incomparable design, while matching BMW's road feel. And Audi is "much cheaper" compared to BMW.

 

[JackD201]

Try this generation of 6.3 litre V8 AMGs and you get good doses of acceleration terror along with the luxury. My other brother Joe has an RS4 and yes it is a very good car.

The Audi that has got my attention bigtime is the R8 Spider with the Lamborghini supplied V-10. That car looks so much better in person as does the 5 coupe. I'd like to see the RS5 in person.

 

[AMP]

I'll preface this with the statement that I'm a complete BMW addict and have owned more than I can count... seriously, I think I've had at least 20 of them.

BMW's change in design direction is definitely a polarizing topic, and I'll be the first to say that I wasn't (nor am I now) crazy about a number of their design choices. The E65 7 series is an ugly car when compared to the E38 that preceded it and the F01 that took its place. Even considering that fact it was one of the best selling BMW models of all time. They sold the damned things by the boatload and as controversial as the design language was it did serve to inspire similar design cues in several competing marques (including Mercedes, Audi, Lexus, etc). In fact many of the design features which were universally hated at the time have become commonplace. Whether or not it was good design is always up for debate, but it was definitely forward-thinking and served as inspiration for a generation of cars.

Personally I like to think that they did it on purpose so as to uglify all of the copycats and make their next generation of more thoughtfully designed cars stand out again.

The 5 series is near and dear to my heart and we currently own 4 of them (E34 M5, E39 M5, E39 530, and F10 550). My favorite always will be the E39, but having owned 2 E60s (550 and M5) it really was a great car. I hated the design at the time it came out, but it definitely grew on me.

The 3 series always remained fairly conservative, but the E46 was one of the high points. It was the first one where the quality of materials used was in-line with the rest of BMW's models. The E9X series continued that and I've had very good experiences with those cars. My wife had an '06 330i and it was a great car. I'm currently driving an '11 E92 M3 coupe and it's one of the best that I've ever owned. I also have an '04 E46 M3 coupe and, honestly, once beyond the superficial items the two cars are more similar than they are different.

Of course I'm biased as my livelihood is dependent on fanatical BMW owners... and no, I don't work for BMW...