I just have to get this off my chest...

I will never buy a BMW product ever again!

I dropped my car off at the dealer about a month ago to fix two things. The leather wrapped around my dashboard was shrinking and coming loose (no doubt a result of the amazing Texas summer heat combined with a black interior). Also, there was a funny vibration coming from the pedals, even at idle.

To fix the dashboard, they ended up having to order a whole new one from Germany, which took forever, and then they had to order a new VIN plate, which also took forever. What's wrong with the old VIN plate? Probably some kind of insert-once-only mechanism to prevent various forms of car theft. Okay, I can deal with that.

They gave me some initial grief about the pedal vibration after diagnosing it as some kind of clutch problem, calling it a "wear item" and thus not elgible for warranty repair. B*llsh*t! When's the last time you heard about a clutch wearing out at 26K miles? Anyway, they agreed to fix it, only when I picked up the car, it felt like the pedal was sticking when you pulled it out -- not smooth at all. Okay, fine, so I gave them grief and said to go fix it again, and they said "nope, it's working fine." Now I'm off to go pick up my car (again) and see if it's still fubar.

I get almost wistful thinking back to my reliable old '91 Nissan 240SX.

There's one more year left to my BMW warranty. I intend to trade up to something Japanese between now and then. Any thoughts on this? Has Japanese car quality remained as good as it used to be? Is it possible to buy a car today, perform the regular maintenance, and expect it to just work?

Grrrr.... the Mazda RX-8 looks pretty damn attractive, except replacing the stereo would be a pain.