And it’s not just the cost, as I understand it, they’re a bitch to work on.
German cars are usually pretty good but they have the reputation of overengineering the crap out of ‘em.
For example, my wife’s needed a battery last year, I found out you can’t just go to autozone and plop one in, the battery has to be “registered” with BMW or bad things happen in the form of trouble codes.
And to register it, whoever does the work has to have BMWs proprietary software and they don’t just hand that out to anybody.
So with parts and labor I got out of it for $300 and feel fortunate it wasn’t more. 😏
A friend of ours runs a 25/7 Towing / Wrecker Service. We live in a fairly affluent area.
He said the number one cars he gets calls for on sides of the roads are Mercedes and BMW.................
My highlander has been reliable but the maintenance can get speedy. Start/stop engine batteries are more expensive. I have the V6 and the intake manifold has to come off to access the back three spark plugs during the service interval at 80K. I’ve also needed 3 alignments in ~100k miles.