I just don't see the luxury in Audi I guess, but that's fine. Yes, I am an old time BMW fan, but do agree with you. Unless they begin to innovate again and stop cutting corners, my current will be my last. To be fair, while I love our RX, it isn't half the car our GS was. That car didn't have near the gadgets of the RX, but you could tell Lexus wasn't focusing on mainstream with the build as they are now. 15 years of solid reliability and never so much as a tear in the leather or a squeak. There are things in my RX that are already showing wear at age 3!

 

I must add that this whole mentality of leasing and swapping every 3 years is almost encouraged by car manufacturers and their finance arms. I really don't want Lexus to participate in this practice. For the most part, Lexus's inner workings are still long term durable but the interior (like the crappy front seats) and electronics (unusable NAV, poor seat heater and ventilation, bad stereo, cheaper leather, and whole swaths of plastic on the dash) leave much to be desired. I also didn't like that Lexus tried to use rubber engine coolant hose until a huge TSB came out and replaced it with a metal one. (Porsche and BMW as well some MB models have this) This was, as I understand, was a bit of a fiasco for the 2nd gen RX.

Furthermore, I'm always suspect of cars offering free maintenance right up to any major maintenance interval time. For example, Audi offers the 50K maintenance thing. I bought into it once and leased an A6 a while ago. It was OK up to 50K. Then, the engine started mis-firing right at 55K miles as if it was on schedule, then, broke the cam shaft. Yes, that solid steel thing actually broke with a loud bang.

So here is the scam. BMW has a network of vendors that collect BMW used parts and resell them back to BMW. In the process, BMW re-manfuactures them and uses it in their cars. this is not the same as "used parts." It is actually re-made by BMW. As I understand, BMW's parts business is huge and have been a success with its subsidized leasing and free maintenance program.

I don't have a lot of data with Audi's but it can't be very different.

Benz used to have the same program with free maintenance. However, they quit doing this due to have consumer complaints of poor reliability right after the warranty period (some people kept their cars after the warranty, I guess) after the S class make over in 1999. it took them 10 years, to move back up the reliability rankings. The newer S, E and C class cars are well made and made to last like a real car. (You'd be surprised that newer Benz's actually uses a lot of Denso parts - a primary Lexus parts vendor). And they don't play funny parts recycling tactics like BMW does.

 

Don't put too much faith into MB. A buddy of mine leased an E-class and it needs major engine work to get cold engine chattering fixed.
He figured it's not use dealing with it now and will let the next owner fix it under warranty.

Toyota can't afford playing this game. Their major value offer is reliability. Take that away and there's not much substance left.
People keep buying Germans because they [used to] build engaging to drive cars.