Jon-
all talk to ugly styling and good handling aside, don't you think that the interior of the e65 is kind of poor in terms of quality of materials and feel?
-Look at the shiny boom box type of plastic used for overhead console that surrounds the light and sunroof controls
-push in the a pillar covers and headliner-- they bend easily and feel really cheap. Try that on an old 7 or an e46 for that matter- much better build
-feel and look at the idrive controller-- the center piece of the whole car. Its plastic could have come from an early 80s boom box. You'd atleast expect them to have used real aluminum and maybe leather for this part. Even if Nissan put that on the Altima people would say that it felt and looked cheap.
-Touch and fiddle w/ the fiddly and poor feeling and poorly located seat controls. Listen to the sound of the motor-- its not a strong deep sound-- its kind of a cheap sound.
-Cheap feeling headlight switch
-Look at the cheap grey plastic that surrounds the climate controls
-feel the action of the climate control knobs-- not nicely weighted or damped. the knobs feel and cheap and plasticky
-Look at the cheap grey plastic that forms the accent lines on the doors. Compare that w/ any of the trim in an e39, e46 or e38. Feel the sharp plasticky edge where it kind of sticks out on the bottom. The e38 had solidly affixed accent trim as does the e39. The e46's is a bit wobbly but still much better than this.
The e46 aluminum/titatiunum trim is much nicer than this atleast.
-Listen to the door thunk-- and compare that w/ an e38-- the e65 sounds kind of tinny.
-look and feel the cheap looking and feeling telephone keypad that pops out of the dash.
-Feel and listen to the action of the 2 wooden drawers that pop out of the middle of the dash--- again, cheap feeling.
-Listen to the loud and unrefined sound of the motor that closes the trunk lid.
-There's more- i'm sure. But pretty much nothing looks or feels quite as good as it should on a 70k+ car. Or even a 30k car.
-I think the cheapness is magnified by the minimalist nature of the interior. While nice in concept, for something like that to work- all of hte materias need to feel and look really good.
Compare these features to the 3, 5 and former 7 series-- or any Audi, VW and even Mercedes. Cheap in comparison.
I'm sorry-- its just really obvious that BMW is cutting costs in an obvious way and think that customers won't notice. Mercedes learned its lesson on cheap feeling interiors and is improving things in its latest round of models. Even the current S class whose interior was rightly criticzed when it came out is much better built than the e65's.
YEah, the e65 may drive great-- but a 70k luxury sedan needs to be better built. Personally, I think it should look better too- but that's just my opinion. THe cheapness of the materials is less subjective. Its almost a GM like approach- make a really powerful big car that uses lots of cheap materials and has lots of gadgets.
