so many pipu who never own german imagine its like owning a ferrari
i had an e90 320d before and had several friends and relative who owned benz,bmw,audi and porsche,we always share our ownership experience among each other
to sum it up,if you're the kind who never bother to know anything bout car and usual maintenance stuff(now i do mean really basic knowledge),you always like to let somebody else such as the service center to maintain the car for you,continental car will brutally punish your wallet.
but if you are the type who more or less know the basic working of a car,you can do some first level troubleshooting yourself,you source your own parts and have own trusted mechanics,MAINSTREAM german cars are just slightly more costly to own than japanese counter parts
people don't realized that most cars works the same,unless you're talking about exotics offering,otherwise its just the usual maintenance stuff; follow the service manual,change the fluids on time,use the correct specification you'll be fine,those job don't usually require special tools,any mechanics can do,dont be con into fancy expensive workshop,in fact i can safely say changing engine oil on beemer and benz are much easier than japanese car,the filter are on top of the engine.
the exception is if you kena lemon car that require unusual parts that's hard to source or hard to replace,like busted head gasket,blocked injector,oil leak,turbo failure(me kena,but there's cheap way around it)
so the tricks for used german cars is just avoid lemon,and avoiding lemon is much easier than you think,do your homework on common problems,be very careful and take your time to choose,remember there's more than a few dozen unit to choose from at any given time,you just need ONE good unit,then you can enjoy an inexpensive german cars
Agreed with you, owned E90 6inline brandnew since 2009 till today, serviced at BMW Bavaria Jln Tun Razak since new until today, service once a year about RM500 to RM600, major serviced about RM1k++ since new until today, i'm not sure where the figure RM5k/year everybody mention about it maintaining this Ultimate Driving Machine, the most expensive part just to changed the tires or maybe absorber rm300/pieces, dont believe the slogan Banyak Makan Wang