Oh, yes you are absolutely correct there. My mechanic has warned me against these cars.
Honestly, I can’t say I’m impressed with any car anymore. But I have learned that some of these X5s ran out of transmissions, so they are backed by the GM 4l06e transmission with a horrible, faulty computerized valve body. That valve body goes catastrophically. A manual would be best bet.
After owning a BMW I can say that what people report is true : There are about a million little things that can go wrong on these cars and everyone of them will give you a CEL. BMW makes sure that their product sees their mechanic frequently.
So upkeep is a top cost figure on ownership. But I actually bring mine to a qualified BMW mechanic for it’s routine. And it’s routine is pretty frequent. The result though is a 2.5 liter engine that does the work of many V8s I’ve owned, while getting the economy of many 4 bangers I’ve owned. BMWs were built by people who cared, and it shows in every way. The must be balanced, factory fresh and unmolested to run they way that they do.
What I can tell you is that the damned “auto dimming” rear mirror is MAC addressed, binded to the ECU and leaked ammonia all over my console. I wasn’t happy about that. Give me a damned switch from now on. (In all fairness, my Yukon has the same issue, but the repair is less than half because the Yukon doesn’t need to bind it’s new mirror to the ECU for it to operate)
Speaking as someone who’s owned BMWs and looked at new ones at every auto show, I don’t see where you’re getting this “BMWs were built by people who cared, and it shows in every way” because they don’t and haven’t for years.
Whoever is informing you about the X5 is getting it wrong. The X5 wasn’t just bandaided with the 4L60E trans (which was actually a good trans until GM started using Chinese parts in it), BMW’s automatics have been made by GM for decades in a plant in France. The X5’s automatic transmission is a custom unit, sharing few if any parts with any other GM product; many of their automatics are custom BMW designs. Consider that at the time the E53 X5 was introduced, GM didn’t HAVE a 5 speed automatic - there are NO 4 speed E53s so it couldn’t have had the 4 speed 4L60. The manual transmission was removed after 07.
One thing you’ve failed to consider is that even the 3.0 is heavily overworked in that car; there are no 2.5L E53 or E70 X5s. I don’t know how old a V8 you’re comparing it to but the 227hp the 3.0 produced wasn’t terribly impressive considering that contemporary and competing V8s cheerfully churned out 100+ more HP while having comparable fuel economy. Also worth mentioning the E53 had notoriously harsh suspension that was fragile.