Well, you have to admit, these issues seem to strike a nerve. I really appreciate everyone’s comments. They are all well taken. I never did mention replacing the X with MB or any other car. To be honest I’m not sure what I’m leaning towards…yet…., except it ain’t gonna be an SUV of any kind. I guess I’ll be doing a lot of test driving and listening to your inputs.

As for it being the wrong time to leave BMW, I think it’s the other way around…BMW already chose to leave me a long time ago. Whether or not any other marque is less worthy than BMW is irrelevant to me at this point, Ive had my full share. All I've ever owned since 21 are BMW’s, which gives me the absolute right to be as harsh with BMW as I please, thank you. Harsh is todays veridict of $3500 for failed transfer case @ 85k hwy miles!!!!

I can accept a certain level of engineering maladies as par for the course and do understand what acceptable failure is, but it seems every iteration of BMW exposes a new weakness in design instead of improving upon it.

Mack/skibum could not have said it better… “Any brand has issues. It is how those issues are corrected that matters. “

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RudyCM