I think it’s a fair summary. Although my friends with equivalent sized/complexity cars from the German brands have had similar experiences too. If you are buying a luxury car, expect out of warranty costs to be painful and plan accordingly. Luckily mine is in warranty!

 

knock on wood hopeful they've worked out the common flaws in the later model years as the platform has had decade of time to get refined and bug fixed.

 

They are great dependable cars overall. This is just stuff that could happen. People should look at this as diagnostic guide. It's pretty rare for a lot of this stuff to happen. Cracked cylinder liners? I have never heard of that happening. A lot of it too can be traced back to bad maintenance as well. Overall I think it's a safe buy. I would get a later model than the first year but that goes for just about any car. Overall I think it's the 'safe choice'. And the parts at least in the US don't seem to be very expensive either but in Australia it might be a different case. Here you can buy a good majority of the parts with really good warranties on them.