I guess we'll find out if this will turn out to be another rash hire in another 9 months. I'm actually surprised at this move.

agreed. IMHO, last good BMWs were E90 and F10s. That's when they still cared about craftsmanship even in areas not visible to customers.

"if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users "

cracks me up. I once leased a BMW for 3 years. By the time I returned the car, I still didn't what all the cryptic buttons for HVAC and other controls. They just refused to follow established automotive ergonomic conventions.

Anyway, my father used to do business with Germans for a long time. He had many interesting stories to share, but one that has always stayed with me is, his disdain for how cheap / penny pinching his German companies and their employees were when doing deals. This was in the 90s, so definitely passed the West Germany glory days.

My take is, in the era of global competition, Germans didn't know how to strike the right balance and effective allocate resources. Where to compromise, and where not to. I don't know if it's sheer stubbornness or they're just wired differently.

It's the 25% VAT. Pre VAT, it's ~$685.

With state sales tax of 8% where I live, the base would cost me $648.

So not a huge difference.

That's the magic threshold. Can't complain about the non-upgradable 8GB RAM at that price.