An interesting excerpt from slate magazine-
The Luxury Crisis: Pity the poor consumers of luxury sedans. They want to replace their 4-year-old Mercedeses and 7-series BMWs. They have a choice of a) the new Mercedes E-class, great but filled with glitches (see, e.g., this article if you're a WSJ subscriber); b) the BMW 7-series—same as Mercedes, except uglier (with 175 percent more problems than the average car, according to the latest Consumer Reports auto issue); c) the big Lexus, reliable and reliably boring, and d) the Audi A8—$70,000 for a bland-looking nose-heavy car with pig-in-poke longevity? ... The rich are in deep trouble here, trapped with nowhere to turn. ... P.S.: Here's a great market opportunity for Detroit—if, say, Cadillac had a solid rear-drive luxury model ready. The wealthy people I know are no more brand loyal than anyone else. If they were that stupid, they probably wouldn't be rich! Certainly they wouldn't have flocked to Lexus when that marque was concocted by Toyota a few years ago. ... A better description is that they flit from whatever brand is supposed to be good one minute to whatever brand is supposed to be good the next. They're ready for something new. ... Maybe Chrysler could build a high-end BMW-beater based on the 300. Or maybe Mercedes and BMW should bring out Special No-E Editions of their luxury vehicles without the balky, gratuitous German electronic gimmicks that cause them to spend so much time in the shop. They're fine cars underneath, so why not offer, you know, just the car! I bet they'd sell like crazy. These rich people are desperate. ... Update: Mercedes has actually admitted its errors and is removing useless electronic complications as fast as it can. But what to get in the meantime? ...