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Comment by jjtheblunt | Hacker News Reader

> At least in the USA, a new BMW is a high-end car.

No they most definitely are not.

They're marketed as high end, but their engineering is a tour de force of cost cutting behind the scenes.

I just got rid of my 2024 BMW i4 xdrive40, for an electric awd subaru-toyota-lexus joint effort platform (there are a few variations, all related in engineering) and it's like jumping several years into the future, including efficiency, which is roughly 25% higher in the japanese (more modern) cars, the handling dynamics on the japanese platforms are far more refined, and then vastly less shitty interior materials, except the BMW seating which was good.

I've driven BMW "high end cars" for about 11 years, and emphatically recommend looking at Audi, Mercedes, and Subaru/Toyota joint efforts, as well as Tesla and Rivian, depending on what you seek.

$0.02 from someone who spent a fortune and lived and learned.

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> > At least in the USA, a new BMW is a high-end car.

> No they most definitely are not.

> They're marketed as high end, but their engineering is a tour de force of cost cutting behind the scenes.

Whether you personally like it or not has no impact on the product positioning. BMW is a luxury car brand [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW

If you think like that then what makes a car luxury is not whether it's a good car, not whether it's comfortable, not anything at all about the car.

This reasoning makes the price it's own argument. It's supposed to be good because it's expensive and only because it's expensive. The car itself is beside the point (and the car's quality will of course soon be sacrificed by management to the insatiable gods of profit)

I'd rather have a good comfortable luxury car.

that's what i refer to by the marketing...and it carries indeed over into the pricing, and carries over into the insurance rates to repair at such pricings.

Is there any brand of any product which is not subject to extreme cost-cutting these days?

Skoda seem to have a small budget, perhaps $5/car, to add features in. Nothing major: an ice scraper / tread depth gauge under the fuel cap; a parking ticket clip on the side of the windscreen - that sort of thing. It tends to be disproportionately popular with owners.

Interesting 0.02.

Recents for me: 2020 X5 xDrive40i, 2023 M340 xdrive, 2026 i4 xDrive40i.

When I bought the X5, I tried all sorts of other comparable models, both higher and lower price/quality.

I thought Lexus SUVs drove like 1990's era Mercury Grand Marquis -- "refined" is one way of putting it. Mazda claims their cars are solid handlers but my experience with three of them is, well, meh - very model dependent. Volvo SUV handling - refined, but the vehicles feel large.

Long way of saying - I feel when driving BMWs that they drive as the brand describes them: the ultimate driving machine. Refined is not the first word that comes to mind, but not far down the list.

2026 i4 is awesome. I won't argue the range. Pretty pathetic but that car isn't my range warrior anyways.

> 2026 i4 is awesome.

that's identical to my 2024 i4 xdrive40 (there's no i), _except_ the entire batch of i4 (i5,i7) built from late summer 2023 to early 2024 had faulty heat pump valve subsystems from Vitesco (subsidieary of Continental) and were basically all lemons. BMW never owed up or did a recall, but did multiple replacements of the subsystem until the cars stopped failing.

your 2026 is two years newer by model year than my 2024, so perhaps you've got a corrected design, as it happened after the model refresh in 2025.

I don’t think is fair to compare Asian and German cars. I personally dislike Asian designs regardless of how reliable and efficient they are. Subarus are objectively ugly cars and they are not great as daily drivers. Lexus offer a closer driving experience as German cars, meaning you can have both a sporty and family car without the annoyance of a sport ride and noise of a WRX. But is still very Asian looking with the sharp angles, ugly headlights and large grills.

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