I've found that when someone asks about a particular car or truck model here, what you get back are mostly anecdotal stories about someone that someone knew who had one, (or 10 model years older), and it really sucked.
Of course, that is the nature of the beast since people don't talk about how great their car or refrigerator is unless you specifically ask about it. Bad news travels like wildfire but also gets distorted in the old "game of telephone" phenomena.
Is there a way to find aggregated data about, say, how many people w 2012-2015 BMW 5-series cars had serious mechanical or electrical problems? Besides Consumer Reports, does anyone else do it?
I'm trying to rationalize the purchase of something like the above because they are dirt cheap compared to new and offer amazing style/performance/technology. The only deal-killer would be outrageous service and repair costs. I find that when I ask here, I get one or maybe two actual owner/users and a half dozen stories about someone's sister's brother's dog trainer's hairdresser who had one and it exploded.
Ok, I exaggerated a little there but you all know what I mean. Do I need to be the guinea pig and buy one of these heaps to add to the data collation?