UK 5 Series

5 series models built from January 2011 for the UK will have Heated Front Seats and USB interface as standard equipment, albeit at an increased price over 2010 models.

Petes550i

It still baffles me how a luxury car like the 5 series these days still doesn't have heated seats as standard when even the cheapest Hyundai has them.

Otherwise, the F10 is an awesome car!

sdg1871

With German cars virtually everything is an option. That applies to most German made cars.

That is one department where German cars and Japanes cars differ wildly.

Petes550i

Of course that's always been the case in the past but these days, with so much fierce competition, BMW should know better.

That being said, in recent years, BMW has done better with their equipment packaging but to still have stuff like leatherette as standard on a car with a base price of $50K (535i) is still kind of perplexing not to mention insulting.

TitangrauII530iA

Hi,

basicly it is up to BMW importer in each country which options they include in basic pricing. In Nordic countries seat heaters are as standard, meanwhile many options that are standard in other countries are excluded here. I think this is good, because many options are not necessary in all markets and this way you pay what you want.
Basicly each BMW car is individually built according to order, based on end user order or importer order. The factory makes every time an individual car. It is the same with Mercedes and other premium makes. Lower segment cars are more or less standard products. I visited Mercedes in Stuttgart year 2001 - that time they had produced 1,4 million W210 E-Class cars, four pcs of them were completely identic! When I visited BMW factory in Dingolfing spring 2007 I was told that each car is produced according to customer order. No cars are made for stocking at factory...

Best regards,

TGII

mooney058

Eventhough I could afford a mid speced f10, it drives me crazy to see that some basic gadgets are 'optional'. It just feels like bmw ag wants to take all the pennies they could from their customers. In Belgium leather interior for a car of the size of previous 7 series is still optional. It just gives me a negative image of a bmw. I would have preferred they provide leather and increase the base price. I think vw is now better speced car than bmw.

Richard in NC

Their reasoning is thus:

Do you need heated seats in Florida or So Cal? Probably not. BMW gives you the choice if you don't want them. Same with the iPod adapter. Not everyone has an iPod so why force everyone to pay for it? Whereas the Japanese brands do trim levels. For example, in some models, if you want the nav, you may be forced to get the rear view camera, wood trim, etc because of that one models specifications. It is more expensive to do it the BMW way but that's the cost of having the choice.

Petes550i

OK, but why leatherette? It has nothing to do with climate so what's the reasoning for BMW to keep using fake leather? Cost? Environment? I believe they are the only automaker to actually use fake leather as standard. I could understand if it's standard on the 1 series or even the 3, but to make it standard on the 5 is just plain wrong.

johnbmwx6

Both these options are on my order @ 2010 prices, mine arrives Jan 2011, the price hike for VAT alone is £1450.00

and thats on 2010 prices. Those options are "peanuts" in the options list.

Rudy

Another thing to consider is that comparing the standard offerings from the Asian manufacturers against the optional offerings from the German manufacturers isn't always apples-to-apples.

For example, the standard heated seats in a "top of the line" Honda I had a few years back just...how should I put it...SUCKED! The seats had hot and cold spots instead of the even heating that you get from BMW seats. Also on the Honda, believe it or not, the front passenger heated seat only included the seat bottom and not the back! WTF? What's up with that?

On a spec sheet, the Honda could claim "front driver and passenger heated seats are standard" but to me, I'd much rather pay a bit more for optional ones that work well than for ones that provide marginal utility...