While I agree with you that BMW do suffer from their rattles here and there, I have never had a BMW that had anything mechanically wrong that would impair its driving function. Sure we've had our fair share of electrical problems over the years, but as I have discovered if you buy a BMW its 3rd year in your pretty much guaranteed a trouble free ride - aside from the occasional lemon.

I do find it tragic that you choose to leave the brand now, as Panke has declared BMW's new priority to be quality. BMW has also substantially improved this year over last year in the J.D. initial quality rankings - which shows that Panke's word stands for something. That and BMW rates much higher then its competing german marques.

New age BMW's (iDrive/Bangle whatever you want to call them) share their electronics, simplifying the build complexity and meaning that bugs that are discovered can be applied to the whole system. Also the way that new age BMW's have completely upgradeable software, means that many of the issues found in 1st year models (say 1st year 5 series for example) with a complete software upgrade are now pretty much trouble free.

The Japanese are starting to have growing pains too. Honda had a huge blunder with their new Oddysey minivan.

Wrong time to leave BMW my friend...

You do know that the Range Rover is X5 based. All the electrical components are shared. From 06 onwards though they no longer have the BMW engine, so I have no idea how reliable those Ford one's are... but best of luck to you (You'll need it, considering Rover's quality of past).