A fair rebuttal and opin, as usual, from my knowledgeable and reasonable friend, JCL...

I still feel that ordering a car, and willing to wait 2,4, or 6 weeks for it, (like the 'old days'), should afford some individual option selection, or at least 'packages' that are not stuffed, or pkgs that don't contain a paragraph of items to get to the one item of interest to a buyer.

My sammich analogy was facetious; BMW's litany of packages is bloated, very pricey, and somewhat interconnected and confusing, at least to this casual 'build it' consumer.

Cars, (most BMWs esp.), are now a quarter to a third of the price that one can still buy a non-MacMansion in many areas of the lower 50. I hear you on the condo situ, as our FL Starter Shack was much the same in terms of options, and your engineering/parts supply reason is valid...but, I suppose I am just reacting/ranting about the recent drift of BMW, et al, to make a heated seat or a simple BT part of some several thousand dollar 'pkg'.

I am taking a Pasadena on the X1 anyway; the early reports are not overpoweringly sanguine, no manual trans, etc, etc. And, V still likes her Hyundai Tuck anyway.
Cheers, mD

To be honest, I like the X1 series as a whole very much but it isn't really a very good car. The VW Tiguan beats it many comparison tests in Europe and the X1 is priced premium for an interior that isn't.....really. I've seen and been in them in Germany and would consider say, a sDrive20d with the typical array of a la carte options (41.750 €) but it certainly as a whole isn't that impressive a vehicle.

I have an option list along price list for the X5 2010 model year... In that list, every single item had to be explicitly ordered, like the sunroof, or the vinyl or leather seats over cloth... i think, even the power windows had to be specified...

Getting a vehicle together was an enourmous task, and one was not guaranteed that he would not miss something simple as windshield or something... lol...

I will try to dig that list and if I find it, i will post it - it is outdated, so I think it should be ok to post.

well, it seems that I exaturated some of the points for a more dramatic effect... :nanana:

here we go, couple PDFs for the now outdated new X5 (and X6) 2010 and 2011 models