Originally Posted by jrcart

Trust me, you are paying for that "free maintainance" with your BMW, they hid it somewhere in the MSRP. Also, be careful with those "free brakes" after track events, poke around on a few of the BMW boards and see how many guys got their stuff revoked for track use, BMW does not think highly of this, AMG on the other hand has never voided a warranty simply for recreational track use. BMW is nearly as bad as Nissan when it comes to prohibiting track use.

I agree with you that BMW car club is a little better than anything MB/AMG offers but when you purchase an AMG you do get free addmission to the AMG driving academy which I have attended and is top notch. They also offer a few AMG PL track events thrown in each year.

Originally Posted by JumpinJim

Yeah, nothing is free. I haven't beat up the M5s brakes too bad yet to test how well they honor all that. When the SL had 500 miles on it there was an odd wear pattern on the front drivers rotor. I took it in and they said the pads were all flaking and acused me of having raced it. Who, me? No, never... They did replace all the pads free of charge.

I'll be taking advantage of the driving academy day at COTA in April. I'll get to test out the E63S on the track. Looking forward to it. Based on my track experience with the M5 I've no doubt the E63S will be better there. M5 oversteered too much, like constantly. All it wanted to do was drift.

Originally Posted by jrcart

Back in the mid 90's when I purchased my first of several M3's(2 E36 and 2E46) I was very pleased with BMW's customer service both at the dealer level and at the regional level. I think a lot of customer service issues stem from individual dealerships rather than a company as a whole, I beleive that is probably the case with most brands. By the time the mid 2000's came around I definately noticed a big difference in customer service. I owned one of the first E60 M5's in the country, I owned such an early release car it came over with european tuning and mine had launch control which was not offered on US spec cars. In all there were 11 cars(if I recall) that came to the US with the euro tuning and launch control. There was a recall on those 11 cars so I brought the car in and they had it for 22 days. Yep, I had a 2 week old car that was recalled and then sat in the dealership for over three weeks while they sorted the tuning issue. After I got the car back I had a number of electronics issues, the car sucked, it was never right. I owned the heap of crap for less than a year and then traded it in for a Lingenfelter CTS-V(another peice of crap LOL). I would be hard pressed to ever buy another BMW after that experience and thankfully BMW is making it pretty easy since IMO they have not offered anything worth owning in quite some time now. I do personally like the front end styling on the new M3/M4 a huge improvment over the E9X's vanilla styling but I will have to wait and see some real world performance figures from it before I can pass real judgment.

Sasha/SMP, you are defending the brand which is great but you say you have owned 11 BMW's/ 5 M cars, can you honestly say that M offerings of the last 5-6 years have been up to par with their offerings from say 1995-2008? The last good M car in my opinion was the Z4 M Coupe. All I am saying is for a while there M cars were the undisputed best cars out there, AMG had nothing for them, Audi had nothing for them. While I am not saying M cars are garbage what I am saying is they have not progressed at the same level as their competition. They were the benchmark and now they are trying to catch up. I own a 2012 Audi S6, not a huge power car but a good dd, I looked at an X drive 535 and 550 but I was not impressed, even the BMW interiors have gone downhill IMO, my Audi has quilted stitched seats door panals, alcantara headliner and wheel, you can not get that stuff on a 550 and the RS6 takes it up a notch from my S6, my S6 has a better interior than the new M5.

Originally Posted by SMP

Hey Jim,

Maybe I didn't choose the right words or it came out wrong, but I don't defend BMW's M devision. To be honest, the entire car industry, no matter which brand, is going in a different direction that I would like. Even though they all offer incredible performance … they're all too big, too heavy and too easy to drive. Driving used to be the primary factor, now I feel it's secondary to all the electronic gadgets stuffed into a car.

There are a few reasons why I chose my F10 M5 based on personal preference, which of course is purely subjective because what I like, you might hate ... performance and practicality ... the looks inside and out … the responsiveness of the engine … the immediate shifts and efficiency of the DCT and since it's my daily driver, it has to kind of blend in … not too much of a statement for business purposes.

Is it an M as M's were in the past? F-uck no! I think the best M I've ever owned was my E46 M3 SMG. Small, agile, fast and for the money, a lot of fun. My E36 M3 second and even though my E39 M5 and E63 M6 SMG were bigger and heavier for my taste, they were still closer to a real M than my F10 M5 will ever be. I picked up the M5 Euro delivery in Munich and drove it for 3 weeks through Germany, Austria and Italy. It shined on the Autobahn and handles pretty good for it's size and weight, but on those tight mountain passes in Austria and Italy, it was a real beast to wrestle around tight corners and serpentines … you can REALLY feel the weight and size. But it wasn't built for that and I was clear about it before I bought it … and therefor still like it and have no complaints.

Originally Posted by jrcart

Cool, I am doing the advanced ADA at COTA in April. I live in Chicago but I have a large division of my company in Dallas and own a condo in The Colony, TX so I spend some time down in your neck of the woods. We will have to go out and grab a beverage or two sometime.

Originally Posted by SMP

Hey Jim,

Maybe I didn't choose the right words or it came out wrong, but I don't defend BMW's M devision. To be honest, the entire car industry, no matter which brand, is going in a different direction that I would like. Even though they all offer incredible performance … they're all too big, too heavy and too easy to drive. Driving used to be the primary factor, now I feel it's secondary to all the electronic gadgets stuffed into a car.

There are a few reasons why I chose my F10 M5 based on personal preference, which of course is purely subjective because what I like, you might hate ... performance and practicality ... the looks inside and out … the responsiveness of the engine … the immediate shifts and efficiency of the DCT and since it's my daily driver, it has to kind of blend in … not too much of a statement for business purposes.

Is it an M as M's were in the past? F-uck no! I think the best M I've ever owned was my E46 M3 SMG. Small, agile, fast and for the money, a lot of fun. My E36 M3 second and even though my E39 M5 and E63 M6 SMG were bigger and heavier for my taste, they were still closer to a real M than my F10 M5 will ever be. I picked up the M5 Euro delivery in Munich and drove it for 3 weeks through Germany, Austria and Italy. It shined on the Autobahn and handles pretty good for it's size and weight, but on those tight mountain passes in Austria and Italy, it was a real beast to wrestle around tight corners and serpentines … you can REALLY feel the weight and size. But it wasn't built for that and I was clear about it before I bought it … and therefor still like it and have no complaints.

Originally Posted by jrcart

I have to agree with you on the direction cars are going in general, epa fleet mandates are forcing the hands of the manufacturers. I don't mind the electronics and most of the technology. I used to be one of those guys that thought a good old 6 speed manual tranny was the only way to go then I drove my E46 and E60 SMG, then I drove the CLK BS, then I drove my C BS with the MCT and finally drove near perfection with the SLS BS DCT, I could never go back to a manual at this point. I could do without the things like navi, blind spot warning, back up cameras, pano roofs and led interior mood lighting.

Truth be told a new M5 or E63 could mos likely spank a 10 year old F 360 around most race tracks and that in itself is pretty cool. Five years ago if you told me carbon ceramic brake systems and large displacement twin turbos would be standard equipment on 4000 pound sedans I would have laughed at you, now it is almost the norm in this class of car. These super sedans are really just four door supercars.

Originally Posted by JumpinJim

Aye, the F10 M5 is a porky, heavy beast. Based on the 7 series chassis. That would explain its added comfort over the E60 as well as it's size and girth. Oddly this comfort is what attracted me to it, that and it was very different from the CLS and SL I already had. The E60 I thought was too rough, SMG too jerky, and inside too bland to consider. The new one changed all that and I guess that's the direction BMW wanted to take the M5. You could almost call it an M7 and at Dallas Raceway I actually had people come up and ask if it was a 7 series. I had to laugh and wasn't quite sure how to answer that one. It's more a fast luxo cruiser now than the boy racer image it used to have.

Originally Posted by JumpinJim

Sounds cool. I'll be at COTA on April 25th. When will you be there? There will be plenty of E63S's there. Wonder if they'll let us race an M5 down one of the straights, for scientific purposes.

Originally Posted by Sidv22

all your points are valid. pardon me if I am drifting away a bit, but the other day, my wife asked me a question which i could not answer convincingly. "why are M3's more visible and outnumber the C63's on the road". i live in the bay area and i gotta be honest. for every 2-3 M3's, i see only one C63. it would be interesting to know more opinions.