BMWs brilliance is it by design or is it due to method?

[genphreak]

Is the reason BMWs last so well more than just good engineering? It seems to me that the dealers have very clear service procedures and disciplines dictated by Germany- in comparison to the other automotive brands.

It appears that those of us in the second hand market do well to get cars that have been so well looked after. The only trouble is most of us (excepting those onn this forum of course) have NFI about maintaining the regime and the cars goto **** due to a couple of big maintainance items cropping up and a whole bunch of missed maintainence...

I have an idea about what can be done to help prevent this. We need a distributed, open version of the BMW Technical Information System where we keep a log of all the work we do, and can see anything we miss... the current TIS does not have this, or any sections for updates, upgrades and modifications...

What do you peeps think? Nick