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We didn't notice it after the first BMW. Or the tenth. Or even the hundredth.
But somewhere around car number three hundred, a pattern started to feel familiar.
Most BMWs don't arrive dead. They arrive tired.
Owners tell the same story every time. The car still drove well. The engine pulled cleanly. No warning lights. Then the MOT came, or a quote landed, and suddenly the numbers didn't make sense anymore.
Once the cars are stripped, the truth becomes obvious.
It's almost never the engine.
The first things to give up are the parts nobody pays attention to while driving. Suspension bushes that have softened just enough to lose control. Ball joints with play you can't feel at the steering wheel. Mounts that no longer hold geometry where it belongs. BMWs hide this wear exceptionally well, right until the moment they can't.
Cooling systems come next. Plastic tanks that have gone brittle with age. Hoses that look fine until they're hot. Pumps that have done their duty quietly for years and then simply stop. Engines blamed for sudden failure usually show signs of long-term heat stress that started here, not inside the block.
Then there's electricity. Cars arrive marked as electrical nightmares, yet the modules are often fine. What isn't is the power feeding them. A tired battery, a confused battery sensor, a corroded ground. Fix the supply and half the faults vanish, but by then the decision to break the car has already been made.
The strange part is how often interiors give up before drivetrains do. Seats collapse. Wheels shine smooth. The car feels old long before it's actually finished.
By the time we reached a thousand BMWs, the conclusion was clear. These cars don't fail suddenly. They wear quietly, layer by layer, until the cost crosses a line.
The BMWs that last aren't lucky. They're understood.
And the ones that don't usually weren't broken at all.