The 212 was sort of the nadir of MB’s quality issues, at least thus far. It shouldn’t have rattled or creaked, irrespective of how stiffly it rode. It remains to be seen if the 213 will be worse.

And those road tests were correct. MB’s manuals have never been very good. Furthermore, wishing for one in this car ignores the reality that a clutch pedal in a 600 horsepower, 4200#, turbocharged, awd luxobarge is about as useful as tits on a boar hog. About as enjoyable, too.

I’m not a big Tesla fan. I’d own a P100D as a daily/beater, if I could justify $140k for a car I’m going to trash, but I don’t find them particularly exciting or interesting and I’m kind of sick of the endless circlejerk over how fast they supposedly are that conveniently ignores the context of when, why, and how…

I’m aware, the lag discussion came about in the context of Godzooks’ MKT. Haven’t driven a Raptor, it may or may not meet my expectations for throttle response. It sounds like shit either way, though.

Hopefully you don’t; I don’t know how common it is, but it came up several times in the research I did when I was looking at the Taurus SHO and it was pretty much the nail in the coffin on that idea for me. Re-reading my last post, it may have come off a bit sarcastic; seriously, I hope the thing is a good car for you.

Hey, if you’re happy with it, more power to you. I agree that it makes adequate power; I have no gripe with it in that regard. I find the throttle response unacceptably poor, and the noise intolerable. The whole thing about using a timing chain driven water pump with an apparent average service life of about 80,000…

I can’t get over the noise. Whatever the 3.5 Ecoboost’s merits may be (and I’m dubious that it has any; I was unimpressed with it in both the Taurus SHO and the Expedition), that is an awful-sounding engine.

Funnily enough, I was just having a discussion last night with some friends about how the SN95 is an embarrassingly ugly, crappy looking car that I absolutely could not stomach being seen in.

I can’t say the F10 chassis has impressed me in any guise, irrespective of drivetrain layout. I’ve driven a RWD 528, too; It wasn’t singularly disgusting like the xDrive car, but it wasn’t a good car by any stretch of the imagination, either. Certainly not in the manner of low-spec 5ers of years past. The engine was…

I recently drove a F30 335i xDrive and a F10 535i xDrive M-Sport and was so appalled that I went and bought a Lexus.

I think this speaks more to what you personally consider important than anything else, honestly.

I would have looked at one the last time I was car shopping if it weren’t for the fact that neither of the two dealers within 100 miles of me had a highly optioned awd model with the ‘big’ engine.

Buy a new Nissan Versa or a (manual transmission only-the auto is terrible) Ford Fiesta. Both can be had under $10k. New.

Counterpoint:
Having driven N55-powered cars with both a 6spd manual and the ZF 8HP, this is one application where I can’t make a good argument for the manual transmission.

It’s a shame so many E34 M5s had the M-System 1s trashed in favor of of System 2s. I thought the System 1s were ugly as sin until I’d looked at them for about 6 months. They’ve grown on me, and I consider them something of a monument to function-over-form engineering.

Yeah, I get that a lot. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I guess—based on what friends that have lived with this whole “salt” thing their entire lives have told me—the “normal” winter beater is some $700 crapcan that may or may not start and/or break down on the side of the road on any given day.

I picked up a 1st gen so it was cheaper than that, but yes. My winter beater is a 2007 GS350 that I bought with 70k on it. I think it’s ideally suited to the task. It’s good enough at Car Things—it shouldn’t leave me stranded, it’s fast enough, it’s comfortable enough, it handles good enough, so on—but it’s not…

The issue most DI engines have with carbon buildup was one consideration that influenced my decision to buy a GS350 as a winter beater instead of a 535i.

People in LA are generally more competent than people in the Bay Area, in my experience. I’ve driven a lot of miles on 85, 880 and 17 in the south bay and I’ve had a lot of experiences where I was doing the speed limit and I was still going faster than everybody else-and I’m talking about hours when traffic was ok.…

I can see that. I’ve driven in most of the states west of the Mississippi, but I have yet to drive on the east coast. “Lives in a small town, can’t drive in the city” seems to be a common problem in general.