[Efthreeoh]

Originally Posted by usshelena725

Meh, you have to remember that those on a dedicated BMW forum are going to be a very small minority of the overall customer base, not to mention that the bulk of the members here did not buy a new BMW, but rather a used one, for which BMW makes no money and doesn't really care about.

There are currently about 377,000 members here, but if you look at the last 20 years or so, BMW has sold around 48 million cars. That means that we represent only about 0.7% of the customer base, and that is factoring in used cars. I imagine that for new car sales, the percentage is even smaller.

BMW is never going to spend so much R&D to cater to less than 1% of the customer base, it would just be bad business.

I highly doubt they spend any significant amount of time looking at any forums, let alone this one. I could be wrong, though. Who knows.

100% disagree with this statement. BMW has long been known to support its cars for 20 years or longer. I have a 1997 Z3, which I can virtually get any part for it from BMW; it's been that way for the 21 years I've owned it, as it was for my '89 E30. BMW makes huge money from 2nd and 3rd tier ownership; it always has. BMW makes a good deal of it profits via leasing and the 1st tier ownership market thereafter. BMW practically invented the car leasing business model in the 1990's.