[mr.fabulous]

My car is my only car and I live alone... and so a break-down of any kind quickly turns into a major inconvenience. I drove an E36 Coupe for 15 years and to 170K miles and thanks to many PMs (all by me) it stranded me only one time... when the one power steering line I had not replaced failed at a crimp. My E82 stranded me after less than a year when the water pump failed, and then again earlier this year when the starter cable went bad.

Thing with me, however, is I'm tired of working on cars. My water pump was replaced CPO. The starter cable was done by my dealer at a cost to me of $550 (to replace a $75 part I could have done myself). My dealer is a pleasant experience... the place is squeaky clean, the people are very nice, and they give me a loaner to drive $0. And so at this point in my life I guess I have more money than I do time and interest in working on cars.

I've thought about having my HPFP replaced... but I don't want to do it and so there it sits. I had the car at my dealer last week for an airbag and I asked about tire pressure sensors (I started another thread on this) and my SA talked me out of it. That's not something that will strand me and so I guess I'll wait.

And so perhaps PMs are a good (perhaps great) idea if you do your own work and find that fun and worth your time. That's not where I am at this point in my life and so I guess I'll wait for the next thing to break. I have a BMW credit card and will use that as "insurance" for the cost of the next repair (I can apply points to repair costs at a dealer and I have over $1K available).

I absolutely hate new BMWs and so when my E82 gets too old to be worth keeping, I will leave the brand and get something reliable and boring. I drove a '17 330i last week while my airbag was being done and was that thing garbage, I would *never* own that car, I hated everything about it.