Twelve freakin' feet of exhaust pipe

I have to commend the engineers at BMW. I've had the pleasure of extensively disassembling the lower bowels of a solid half-dozen vehicles over the years (most of which were newer than the BMW when I tore into them) and without a doubt, this BMW has held up better than everything else I've seen, and has been oddly trivial to pull apart, too. All of the heat shields and brackets are held with appropriate fasteners (try finding that on a Subaru station wagon) and even the exhaust manifold bolts came right out without any serious torque.

And to be honest, this is somewhat to be expected. This car cost at least twice as much as the similar-vintage Eagle Talon and even the Camry I had—and there's absolutely no comparison with the, ahem, Volkswagen Scirocco. So not only do the folks at BMW have a good deal more cash to devote to R&D and production, but more importantly, the pricier automobiles are purchased by more well-heeled folks who will tend to not, for example, do dumb things with them.

So there's a lesson here that all else being equal apart from the age of two vehicles and their trim levels, go for the older and more upscale model, if only because odds are much better that it's been pampered.