I haven't bought German ever, but everything I hear seems pretty negative.

Some of the recent models have plastic timing chain guides and have turned the engine around so that the timing chains are in the back. The only innocent explanation is that the car is only meant to last 10 years at most, so saving the money on plastic instead of metal and screwing whoever owns the car when the timing chains need to be redone (or ruining the engine when the chain fails) is out of scope for their quality team.

There were many older models of BMW that had an electric water pump. If that sounds silly, well, it is. And it failed frequently and was again, very difficult to replace.

I just don't have any respect for German automotive engineering. Reliability is job #1. And the company's themselves, well, "collusive" is a pretty good term. I saw an estimate that German auto industry collusion resulted in about $10k of additional cost per vehicle to U.S. buyers. The cases have somehow been kept quiet, but they've at least been caught holding back innovations until the other automakers have a competitive response, and gaslighting regulators into allowing higher emissions from diesels in the name of reducing the size and filling frequency of the AdBlue tank. I've also heard that there's another layer of this in the parts suppliers. Explains how a wiper motor or wiper body module is somehow hundreds of dollars.

The majority of German Luxury cars are leased more often than bought outright. I think it was Audi where 80% of new car purchases were leases. They are not building the car for long term ownership. They are building the car for people that want to change cars every 3 years.