BMW is known for being one of the world’s top luxury carmakers, but shockingly, this German auto giant has a return rate of 8 percent within the first year!
The reason for this has nothing to do with quality since BMW makes some of the world’s finest automobiles. It has to do with the fact that luxury cars just have a higher return rate within the first year of purchase than non-luxury cars.
Pontiac Aztek
This 4-door crossover has received mostly negative reviews since the start of its life. Despite its solid performance, the car was criticized for being quite possibly one of the ugliest cars in existence.
Apart from an unattractive body, the car is also lacking in performance. This was enough for many buyers to return the Aztek within the first year.
Audi
Surprisingly, Audi is one of the top luxury cars with the highest number of returned vehicles within the first year of purchase.
The reason is that an Audi significantly decreases in value after the first year, and it has extremely high maintenance costs. These two factors are very destructive when it comes to customer loyalty, which is why 5 percent of American buyers return the cars after the first twelve months.
Lincoln Blackwood
Lincoln is well known for producing some of the most luxurious high-end town cars currently on the market. Unfortunately, when Lincoln attempted to stride their way into the pickup truck market in 2002, the results were much worse than expected and led to the creation of one of the most unusable pickup trucks in the world: the Blackwood.
The Blackwood pickup truck lacked many key things that a great pickup needs to have — It had a small interior, a tiny bed, and lacked durability. All of these made the car extremely unattractive and resulted in many owners returning the truck within the first year.
BMW X3
The X3 is BMW's is slightly bigger than the X1, making it a mid-size SUV that is still easy and delightful to drive.
However, even though the X3 is a beautiful-looking vehicle with a luxurious interior, sharp handling, and powerful 355-horsepower six-cylinder engine, almost 10 percent of buyers sold or returned the X3 after just one year of owning it. The reason? Maintenance costs were simply too high.