I just got rid of my 1992 Ford Explorer with 198,000 miles last week, and a guy down the road has a 1991 Ford Explorer with 236,000 miles that he still uses... I gave him all my service manuals. So some people keep 'em running that long.

But I agree that today's BMW's are unlikely to be financially viable to keep running nearly as long as today's GM, Ford, or Toyota products. BMW's part prices, lower reliability, and inherient design which requires more proprietary tools and computer programming simply make it too expensive to keep them running after things start to fail. I think people are figuring this out, and that BMW's historic good resale is beginning to suffer as a result, e.g., 7 series resale.