Rudy

Anyone see this article in the latest Autoweek?

Iceman

After reading that I ask myself how many features BMW has removed !?
Interesting article, Rudy.

rem

I read the article and saw a similar one in the WSJ last week. To me it sounds like MB is dumbing down the cars to adapt to their customer preferences. Or it could be a marketing gimmick to pan idrive (?). I prefer to have leading edge technology and will do the research needed to understand what the maufacturer has built into the car. Until now, everything I've needed with the 545 has been there and I have not had to spend much time reading the manual. I spent 2 or 3 hours in the first few weeks referrring to it, but have not opened it since then. 12,800 miles...go in for scheduled oil change in the morning...still having fun!

gdavis

I have my own opinion on that article since driving the 5er for the last 3 weeks. I think what is entirely different between the magazine article writers and car owners is quiet significant. The article writers are charged with analyzing a car in an afternoon or some brief period and become very stressed when they can't get a simple 'apple-to-apples' comparison. They simply don't hav time to 'learn a car' and assume that tomorrow's cars should be like yesterday's cars.

This is the perfect idea for rental car, one that is just like most other cars and no-one needs to spend time learning much about its use.

The incredible power that comes out of the 5ers is that one begins to realize that much greater performance and features can be harnessed. It just takes a few steps more to become familiar.

Who wants a 'vanilla' car anyway, there are mountains of them around. And more companies will find the need to incorporate this as they too move into the future.

There may however be some simpler layouts for interaction with the idrive, but it is not a broken concept.

Iceman

I totally agree with that!