I still have and use the Parker pen and pencil set I got as a graduation gift 30 years ago. They are fantastic.

>My last 3 cars have been German made, still haven't had an engine shit out on me.

And in 30+ years of driving, I've never had a Japanese engine die on me either. Even my super cheap 200SX, which I put almost 200k miles on and drove the piss out of for 8 years. In that time, I replaced the O2 sensor, the alternator, and an engine mount bolt. Not counting consumables like oil, brakes, clutch and tires, I spent less than $1000 total in unplanned maintenance on that car.

Still, my story is just as anecdotal as yours.

That said, I'd love to have a BMW, but I've been too terrified to actually buy one. I test drove a used 5 series (stick shift) once. It drove like an absolute dream and was the smoothest shifting I'd ever experienced.

Unfortunately (or fortunately for my wallet) when I took it to a BMW mechanic for a pre-sales inspection, he pointed out a bunch of stuff that was wrong with it that would very quickly end up costing me thousands to fix, even at an independent shop. Including very weird but simple/basic things that I'd never even heard of failing on a Japanese car.

And any time I look at a BMW forum, is full of 'I love this car, but a, b, c, and d failed and it cost $hoogoob to fix", for things that would've been a) not failing on a Japanese car and b) hair the price to fix in the unlikely event that it did.

Though I'd still buy the shittiest German car before I ever spent a dime on an American car.