I spent months lurking and stalking on this forum before I bought my XF.

Like any forum, I was initially horrified at all the problems people had but all of the objective (relatively) metrics showed the car to have been very reliable historically. Since I bought mine almost six months ago, I've put 7K miles on it with NO problems.

The scary part is that feeling, for the first few months that you may have something that has deep seated issues but that fear will go away. Keep learning, and hanging out :-)

That aside, I'm not a mechanic nor am I mechanically sound. But I have been able to change the air filters (trust me, not like other cars), brake pads, side presence lights, and will soon reseal my valve cover breathers.

I can do anything with my XF and the group from the forum.

...and my iPad in the engine bay so I can reread and look at the same pictures 10x more than the average handy person.

R

PS- I hang out in the BMW Z4 forums, and while I've had mine for years I'm terrified of a whole lot of things based on forum accounts and experiences. Trust me, happy campers technically over here :-)