Well, the difference here Spectre, is that Ford denied and neglected the problem for years, they didn't do anything about it. I beleive there was a highly publicized case where a whole house caught on fire for that failure and killed some people. Heck, even my dad's old Aerostar had a cruise control failure with me driving it when it went to WOT. Thankfully I kept my cool, shifted to neutral and was able to park safely. No one ever drove that POS again after that incident.
These BMWs have been burning down people's houses for years as well:
http://bmwproblems.wordpress.com/tag/house-fire/ BMW USA's first reaction to any problem is to deny, deny, deny. And then when the evidence is overwhelming, deny some more. So again, what's the significant difference here?
Your Aerostar's cruise failure was not the infamous switch seal failure. In fact, the first sign that something has gone wrong is that the cruise control suddenly stops working or drops offline intermittently. Not max accel. (That's a different failure and one that isn't limited to Ford.)
How many people have been killed by BMW failures? My bet is none...
One recent incident:
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Car_Trouble__BMW_Fields_Questions_About_Turton_s_Death.html
I bet you will now spend countless hours on google searches that somewhat resemble a trustworthy source just to be right again.
Nope. Just three seconds.
Also, are you any kind of R&D or manufacturing engineer? Let me tell you, testing doesn't give you all the answers, sadly because of this field information is incredibly valuable since you can't replicate all scenarios and mitigate risk for them. This is a news story of a company actually correcting an issue, not just ignoring it and sweeping it under the carpet.
No, it's a news story of a company finally admitting to a problem and correcting it after many, many, many years. I have friends that
are R&D/manufacturing engineers who work in the automotive and aviation fields, and they tell me this stuff
should have been caught in testing long before this thing was released. Thermal cycling testing is or should be standard issue, especially with something like a cooling pump. Likewise, the current battery/cable issue is equally stupid; shouldn't final QC have caught that on the way out the door?
Bottom line: BMW's no better than Ford and deserves the same treatment.