BMW owners feel like just the right demographic to pull this shit on. The kind of people to have every possible streaming subscription service running at the same time and blame their financial situation on “taxes”.
Time to focus on jailbreak cars. We need to kill off the DMCA now!
Are we sure they didn’t just put the controls on the turn signal lever?
Drove BMW my whole life and the brand no longer makes cars for people who like driving. Hard to imagine this is the company that made the e46 m3.
Coming up to 10 years of ownership on my 335i and it will be my final BMW. They literally don’t even make a car that is more fun than my clapped out 335. Pathetic. It’s all touch screens and electronic steering and shit that car enthusiasts despise.
Porsche is the only company still making good cars. Unfortunately that is also reflected in their prices.
Miata is always the answer.
Fair point yeah. Miata feels fast because you can actually drive it in its power band without getting in trouble. Sick car.
I think just based on personal preference I would rather go for a 128i than a miata. They are such good value and surprisingly cheap to run.
Have a 2012 128i. Picked the 128 instead of the 135 because I can actually have a bit of fun. I had a 335i before and that kind of acceleration is just completely unnecessary and your fun is over too fast.
I’ve thought about selling for one but I just have a lot of sentimental value with my 335i I guess. I have an xdrive car and I just did the oil pan gasket and put a catless downpipe when I was in there. Like 30 hour job…might as well drive it now lol.
I feel the same. I will use my 2022 320i touring until it turns to dust. By then, I hope I’ll be able to afford a porsche that can fit my dog’s cage in the trunk.
I’m definitely not buying any of the newer models with giant touchscreens instead of buttons.
My next and probably final sports car will be a 2008/09 cayman S. They appear to just work with just regular maintenance. Some owners have like 500,000km haha
I love my Cayman S! The biggest risk from what I’ve read is bore scoring, which can end up fairly serious. If that doesn’t happen, it seems most issues are minor. Mine just passed 100k, bought it in 2023 at 70k. Enjoying every minute I spend behind that wheel!
Unfortunately your photo doesn’t seem to load for me but I would love to see it!
My friend’s dad has an m235, maybe 4-5 years old now? You can’t hear the exhaust without the windows down and it’s got fake gurgles anyway, the shift throw is a mile long, and the clutch feels fucking awful. It’s fast but you can’t really feel it, not to the degree you would expect to anyway.
Meanwhile my 2015 BRZ shifter, especially with a heavier shift knob, feels awesome. Pulled the “assist” spring off the clutch pedal and now it’s perfectly linear. Maybe you could do the same to the BMW but it wouldn’t fix the throw length. The car’s not fast, but it’s not slow and at least I can feel and hear it.
If you want a good car, buy a Subaru. The BRZs are incredible and the WRX, even the new ones though I do have criticisms, are pretty slick.
Clutch felt like shit in my 2011 335i too. You need to delete the clutch delay valve ever since the e90 series, it’s intended for idiots to prevent burning the clutch but all it does is numb the whole thing. $20 quick fix
Recently got to drive a more modern model (automatic/huge displays/…)
The driving was ok. Not my type of car but I guess that’s a matter of taste.
But the displays, what a distraction field for the eyes. I can’t imagine sitting in front of that every day.
And finally most importantly imo, the sound. Wtf BMW? You call that a sound system? Hollow, thin,… I mean it gets the job done but I’d expect more from a brand that has such reputation (Probably a setting somewhere? But still)
Dont like wrx’s?
I appreciate them but not really my thing for some reason
Shifting toward a subscription model at this stage in the game just screams “we are having money trouble.”
Which is ironic considering the image BMW has.
They could try making cars that are fun to drive like they used to for starters
Every upgrade in John Deere equipment of the same model is installed on every unit sold, just unplugged, because it’s cheaper to have the same build process.
School bus transmissions have been like this for over 25 years. They’re all built with 6 gears but if you only want 5 gears (which is ironically is all most school districts actually want) they just disable 6th gear. It used to be that there was a little bit of missing hardware (which could be added later for a considerable price) but now it’s just disabled in software. In the skoolie community (people like me who buy used buses and convert them to motorhomes) you can get your software-disabled transmission upgraded to a six-speed for a few hundred bucks (dubious legality but who gives a fuck).
yo fuck john deere pass it on
pass it on
(100 iterations later)
“Yo, John fucks deer, pass it on!”
Time to hack some John Deere hardware, I suppose.
Ukrainian hackers have been doing custom John Deere firmware for ages I believe.
Slava Ukrani!
I’d like to sit here and say well now I’m never going to buy a bmw, but I don’t think that was ever going to be a choice on my part anyway.
BMWs are great cars - as long as you buy ones that are at least 25 years old.
Most reliable BMW you can get is one of the later year n52 cars. 2011 or so 328i is going to run forever, just a couple of oil gaskets that need changed every few years. If I was in the market for a $5000 car right now it would be my pick
Perhaps paradoxically, this might have turned out to be an advantage rather than a drawback
Most BMW drivers lease vehicles so they’re already used to what amounts to subscription. My fear is that these news articles are actually designed to normalize this to buyers of brands where leasing isn’t the default. They show how the affluent don’t mind paying to convince the less fortunate it’s a glamorous move.
Hell, based on recent approaches, these articles might primarily to help train LLMs to talk “the right way” about this stuff.
It sounds like their market research told them they would make more money this way, and my own anecdotal evidence makes me think they are correct, unfortunately.
The area where I live has some diversity and some decent people, but it is majority white christian conservative. The amount of luxury SUVs I see rage-driving around town can be astounding at times. It’s right up there with the amount of frighteningly expensive emotional support trucks with the drivers still wearing their ball caps and wrap-around shades on overcast days.
Now we all know that if we see someone in a BMW at a traffic light who looks particularly comfortable, that person is an idiot.
Considering I’d never buy one, great! I couldn’t care less.
Pretty much. What next, complaining that there’s a new Yacht tax?
It’s funny how BMW maintains the image that they are rich people cars when they’ve been making cheap trash for like 10 years now. A BMW is literally cheaper than Toyota at this point
This is a terrible article. It didn’t give a single example. It also said there is subscriptions for things that need a constant connection. The connected drive stuff currently are things anyone can do without. This is very rage baity.
That is a hill to die on. I wish you the luck that is deserved.
- to bmw, not oc
Charging someone to use something they already own is extortion.
You’re gonna love how IBM manages hardware upgrades to your equipment by unlocking cores already in your gear. It’s done that for decades.
So how does the car know if your subscription is valid?
Is it going to be like Microsoft when every so often your subscription is a deactivated until you can validate it again?
So your car will need to have constant connectivity to wifi or at least reconnect each day/week/month to confirm the subscriptions are still active?
Nah, they have a cellular data connection.
It pays for itself, because the car manufacturer can sell the driving data to insurance companies.
And now it’s used to make sure your brakes subscription is up to dateYup and Toyota and all the other major companies have been selling your data since 2018. Some even earlier.
