[QUOTE=CA_Tallguy;892882]I love german cars and was hoping that the X5 might be in my future.

After years of driving Grand Cherokees, I bought a used X5 4.4i sport last year. I loved the look, the way it handled, and the fact that I finally had my first BMW, even with 50K on the clock.

I won't detail every issue I had, but the amount of plastic parts that broke was amazing in a car that expensive. German engineering, what a crock. The real tester for me was finding someone who had a clue how to diagnose problems and then fix them. Taking it to a generalist garage was a joke, taking it to a stealership was a joke unless it was under warranty, and even when I found a decent indy shop, it was like pulling teeth to get problems resolved.

The last straw was the ZF transmission. I never liked the goofy shift points - in standard mode it upshifted too fast and then bogged; in sport mode, it didn't shift up fast enough and would nearly red-line in first; only manual auto gave good control and that got tiresome. Then the dreaded "rear end slam" started and it started slipping in 5th.

So looking at a $5000 rebuild 9 months in, I traded it in on a Grand Cherokee with virtually every luxury feature the X5 had, and I got the Hemi. It didn't hug the road like the X, so I installed Addco performance sway bars and Bilsteins, and it's close enough. I LOVE this thing. Best of all, my regular mechanic knows how to work on it!

I wouldn't have another BMW on a bet.