[Thescout13]

Originally Posted by caycep

Actually, that's a good question - the depreciation is affected by long term reliability, right?

There's a 2005 e46 330 with 79k miles on Carmax going for something like $14k. so maybe about 40% or so of its original value or something like that? For a 10 year old car, that must mean something, even though BMW does have a reputation for expensive repairs over 100k miles...hopefully that says something about 3 (and maybe 2?) series reliability, vs. the higher end models (7 series cough cough)

I hear you about throwaway culture these days, but it may be a vicious cycle...perhaps BMW doesn't have incentive for long term Toyota-style reliability because of this, and therefore things will never improve (i.e. why engineer something to last 500k miles without major issues, when ppl are going to lease something else after 30k?)

M3 is a specialty car, can't use that as an example. Because a 135 with 55k miles d fled out sells for 17k now as well