I doubt that very much.

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CENSORED due to not family friendly words

Wait until they start building fully electric cars. Everything will be some plastic composite.

At which point it won't matter.

- Peter.

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2021 Chevrolet Spark
Formerly...
2000 GMC Sonoma
1981 240D 4spd stick. 347000 miles. Deceased Feb 14 2021
2002 Kia Rio. Worst crap on four wheels
1981 240D 4spd stick. 389000 miles.
1984 123 200
1979 116 280S
1972 Cadillac Sedan DeVille
1971 108 280S

CF
Have you seen the bmw i3 shltbix breadvan? CFRP (carbon reinforced plastic. The answer to the question nobody asked.

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CENSORED due to not family friendly words

I took my 2006 e46 MT to 211,000 miles.

Replaced fuel pump when it failed, replaced water pump before it failed, some gaskets here and there. 2 brake jobs. Would have kept driving but got T boned. Best car I ever owned.

Note, reliability is but one measure of a car. By that standard, a Honda is a better car than a MB.

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Those who fail to read posts in a topic thread are doomed to repeat them.
George Santayana.

I took my first 325i ('87 E30) from 214K to 450K, heads never off. Still ran strong when I sold it ... until the electronic gremlin kicked in, happened progressively sooner, usually 5 to 15 minutes, after which point it would maybe start the next day or the day after. But it would always heal itself enough to start again until it got halfway hot and then would conk out again.

Mine had a belt driven water pump but the electric fuel pumps were a PITA. At some point, a year or two after mine, they went with one large in-tank pump but mine had an in-tank and an in-line pump. I was alwasy sweating pronounced whining from the in-line unit, this after the first one died. It's tow truck time then. Once I replaced one with a good spare I head on the side of highway. Got me outta there. Also needed to have fuel pump relay spares on board. OEM on both of those spendy. I was able to find cheaper work arounds, such as mounting an in-tank Vega pump to my in-tank housing.

The E30 is a great car in many ways though, taking it to my mileage figure would have been foolish for a non-mechanic. Too expensive. I managed to find and fix a few gremlins over the years. My big regret is I didn't have the space and capability to put in an M50, along with new harness and ECU of course. That was the plan of the young man I sold it to. Hated to see that car go. Had it for about 17 years.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Bavarians like hitlers the scum of Germany, My mother full german told me thing worse than gypsie's

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1999 w140, quit voting to old, and to old to fight, a god damned veteran

I have a theory that one's automotive tastes are developed in the late-teen years, when one first starts driving. When I started driving, all the M-B's sold in the US were either big S Class cars, or mid-size cars with diesels, all with automatic transmissions, and lousy automatic transmissions at that. So, I gravitated toward BMW's, and I'm still there.

BMW also made small, relatively inexpensive two-door sedans back then, the 2002 and the first 3 Series. This was my dream car in high school. This particular car was built from an existing body shell (to have a 1970's VIN and only be subject to 1970's safety and emissions requirements) and new parts by BMW Classic, circa 2003. It cost about $150k back then. If my office lottery pool ever hits a jackpot, they're going to build another one.

I got all three of my BMW's with manual transmissions. I squeaked under the wire with my 2014 535i. My car was built in February 24th, and they stopped making manual 535i's on February 28th. Frau Putzer's first and probably last BMW, an X3 30i has an automatic, as will my next one (330i or 530i).

Friends of my mother has a 240D back in the 1970's. My mother had severe back trouble. After riding in the front seat of her friends' 240D, she wanted one. But, the diesel engine and horrible automatic transmission stopped her from buying one.

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Actually, I think the 1970's 240D was available with a manual transmission.

Better in what category? Every car is better than another in some category or another.

Be specific in what you look for ina car, then responses can be meaningful to you.

If I were taking one or the other around a track, I might prefer the BMW. Taking one on the road, I prefer the Merc.

But, TBH, you really can’t go wrong with either.

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All lives won’t matter until Black Lives Matter too. Along with Asian lives as well.

“No, I don’t take responsibility at all.” - Don Trump

“The buck stops here.” - Harry Truman

Black Votes Matter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omkJmE1NwDc

The question of “how can we make cars lighter“ has been asked for some time.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

The follow-on questions are:

1. How light do you want it?

2. How much money do you have?


I had an engineering professor who worked on some really cool stuff in his day: OV-10 Bronco, ABM, etc. One of his lesser projects was a DOT-funded passenger rail car with unrealistic weight requirements. The only way to meet the requirement was with composites. So, with cost-no-object, they built one carbon-fiber railroad car. It cost as much as an F-16 and was then unceremoniously parked on the desert.

Similarly...


Behold, the 240 MPG, 1750 pound, $140k economy car....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_1-litre_car#2011_model

Actually, that $140k was the MSRP. They only sold 200 of them. So, the actual unit cost was probably somewhere way north of $1M/car.... so you can save a few hundred dollars with of diesel fuel each year.

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The first gen is always more expensive. Not saying this particular car will come down to $30-$40,000, but it is interesting. 0 to 100 Km/h in 11.9 seconds is not shabby. Not neck snapping, but not 240D either.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K