What Happened To German Cars? [Question Of The Day]

[Andy]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/jalopnik/2009/01/German-Cars.jpg" width="494" height="371" style="display:block;" /The a href="http://jalopnik.com/5136400/2010-mercedes-e+class-mega-gallery"mega gallery/a for the a href="http://jalopnik.com/5056164/2010-mercedes-e+class-spotted-fully-nude"2010 Mercedes E-Class/a, compared to the a href="http://jalopnik.com/5136575/1974-bmw-30-cs"1974 BMW 3.0 CS/a we posted this morning, creates quite the contrast. Frankly, it begs the question: what happened to German cars?/p pHow did the ultimate driving machines turn into the ultimate snooze machines? Why did those smart Bavarian designers stop building exciting cruisers? Who is to blame? What is wrong in Germany?/p pWe used to love German cars, and not just a href="http://jalopnik.com/365370/turbo-diesel-e30-bmws-are-spooky"E30s/a and a href="http://jalopnik.com/cars/jalopnik-fantasy-garage/first-generation-bmw-m-coupe-258496.php"M Coupes/a. We liked B5 Audi A4s, and giant a href="http://jalopnik.com/398885/"W123s/a. Whether slow or fast, a German car represented not just luxury, it represented understated design and competent-yet-thrilling driving./p pThe Germans built up a great legacy of wonderful cars and a reputation for excellence and then, instead of continuing it, they just traded on it. Rather than trying to one-up themselves, they took to slowly "improving" their cars until they became unrecognizable. With each new 3-series the cars get a little heavier, a little more refined, a little more unbearably boring. Remember the old E-Class? It was emthe/em model for luxury cars but, slowly, the cars became luxury bloaters./p pThere's a reason why we'd rather have a a href="http://jalopnik.com/5043650/2009-cadillac-cts+v-first-drive"Cadillac CTS-V/a than an M5 or an M3. It's because the CTS-V is more exciting than anything Germany is putting out. The E39 was the model for the super sedan but now the a href="http://jalopnik.com/5094964/2009-pontiac-g8-gxp-first-drive"Pontiac G8 GXP/a is the new E39. Pontiac is beating BMW at their own game. Listen, Germany, we still like you. You're not doing emeverything/em wrong, but stop trying to build the "best" 5-series and start trying to build the best luxury sedan./p pem(a href="http://jalopnik.com/tag/question-of-the-day/"QOTD/a is your chance to answer the day's most pressing automotive questions and experience the opinions of the insightful insiders, practicing pundits and gleeful gearheads that make up the Jalopnik commentariat. If you've got a suggestion for a good "Question Of The Day" send an email to strongtips at jalopnik dot com/strong.)/em/ppa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/obMHXOUl0Ym-zpWKdJp-rpNoXzE/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/obMHXOUl0Ym-zpWKdJp-rpNoXzE/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare"a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/jalopnik/full?a=nUsedgBJ"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/jalopnik/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/jalopnik/full?a=oh5Yn7Nx"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/jalopnik/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/jalopnik/full?a=Jew7YFqi"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/jalopnik/full?i=Jew7YFqi" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/jalopnik/full?a=CN23wN8N"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/jalopnik/full?i=CN23wN8N" border="0"/img/a/divimg src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~r/jalopnik/full/~4/sRpHVFyUnkQ" height="1" width="1"/

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