I have to disagree with what Schwalbe181 said: A coworker just had the trans go out in his 86K mile Lexus and it cost him $3600 for AAMCO to rebuild it. Lexus wanted $6k for a new trans and $5k for a rebuilt one, and Toyota wanted $4.5k for a rebuilt trans. My girlfriends father has one and he just spent $1200 on a basic tune up. If I am going to pay that much for maintenance on a car it better be German luxury. The cars themselves impress from 5 ft. away but when you sit in the seats and look at the fit and finish it is clear that the Japanese luxury segment is still a long way from matching the Germans. The only real advantage that they have is they appear to have their electronics in order whereas Audi comes up short.

 

^^^ Exactly. The FINISHED quality still does not surpass the German quality of luxury vehicles. And they're not much cheaper. And as for electronics, Audi's new MMI system is amongst the most advanced automotive media interfaces in the market right now. The only thing Lexus has bragging rights on is that their drivers are useless when it comes to parellel parking

 

^^^ Exactly. The FINISHED quality still does not surpass the German quality of luxury vehicles. And they're not much cheaper. And as for electronics, Audi's new MMI system is amongst the most advanced automotive media interfaces in the market right now. The only thing Lexus has bragging rights on is that their drivers are useless when it comes to parallel parking

 

I was thinking about the electronics statement that I made and I believe that the failure in some of the electronic systems that many Audi owners experience is due to the fact that there are 2-3 times the amount of sensors etc. in our cars. When I first brought my car home and gave it a good looking over I laughed because Audi literally thought of every possible situation that their owners may run into and developed the car around that. I cringed at the new Lexus commercial where they brag about having 3 systems to monitor the sensors, knowing that 10 years down the road the cars are going to be disasters.