Thanks for the replies!

Doing the math is an interesting prospect, because it assumes several things related to future reliability and repair costs of my current vehicle (somewhat known) and a future vehicle (completely unknown). If I use the current short term failure rate as a guide on my X5, I'm paying over $2k / month in repairs, and it's a no brainer do dump it. So is this current episode just a blip addressing known issues that unfortunately happened to occur at nearly the same time, or is it predicative of the future?

If I was to go with "the best predictor of future performance is past performance" approach, and given these recent repairs, I'll have spent about $9k on repairs in 3 years, so nearly $300/mth. Then the question becomes, "Do I want to continue to have to spend $300/mth to repair this vehicle, or get something else and potentially take on a payment?"

A few other items to include in the cost assessment: The city of Chicago has 10.25% sales tax(!), so if I was to purchase a $30k CPO, I'd be giving the same $2500 (and more) I'd be giving the indy to fix the X5 to the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago. Either way, I kiss it goodbye.

Also, City of Chicago car insurance rates are ridiculous. When I ran the numbers for a newer car, my rates would go up about ~50%, resulting in an additional $50+ / month in car insurance cost. Certainly a factor to consider if deciding to go newer.

An observation: When did a direct injected turbocharged engine, a technology that's been around less than 10 years, become more reliable than a naturally aspirated V8, a technology that's been around for over 60 years? My experience with the N54 in my 07 E92 was much better than this N62 in this 09 X5, and that was the first year of production for the N54!