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BMW has always had reasons to gloat, it is undoubtedly, one of the leading carmakers when it comes to producing great, and we mean, great, cars.

In fact the latest consumer satisfaction survey has once again revealed that BMW is a winner. And a big one.

The company’s X5 sports activity vehicle — built at BMW Manufacturing Co.’s Greer plant — the BMW 3 series and the BMW 6 series all topped their categories in the J.D. Power and Associates 2007 APEAL survey.

The BMW 5 series and 7 series were runners up in their categories.

The BMW X5 topped the midsize premium multi-activity vehicle segment. That segment includes SUVs and trucks.

A second-generation SUV, the redesigned X5 was launched last November. The first X5 sold successfully through its last days of production and the new X5, says BMW officials, is also now very popular. The plant produced 3,583 X5s during the week of June 18. The X5 will be joined at the plant by the X6 sports activity coupe, on which production will begin next year, and the X3, which is expected to move production to the Greer location around 2010.

“The APEAL study is important because it’s a vote of total confidence in the car,” said Bobby Hitt, public relations manager of BMW Manufacturing. “It is very positive for us, for our customer.”

BMW routinely does well in the APEAL competition, Hitt added. And its especially a pleasure for BMW employees when that vehicle is validated by customers through sales and awards, he said.

Honda led the pack when it came to vehicles topping the list of customer satisfaction, with four cars – the most of any car brand. Honda’s four segment leaders were the Fit (in a tie), CR-V, Ridgeline and Odyssey. Honda was followed by rivals BMW and Mercedes-Benz with three each at the top of their categories.

J.D. Power conducts the Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout Study annually. The company surveys consumers who have purchased a new model-year vehicle after 90 days of ownership to measure satisfaction in 100 different attributes, including ride and handling, engine and transmission and comfort and convenience. This year it surveyed about 92,000 new-car owners.

About BMW

BMW, or Bavarian Motor Works, is an independent German company and manufacturer of automobiles and motorcycles. BMW is the parent company of the MINI and Rolls-Royce car brands, as well as maker of top of the line auto parts like BMW 1600 parts. It is also one of the leading German engineering car manufacturers in the world.

Car maintenance is something that we all have to deal with at some point in our lives. However, what most people fail to realize is that there is certain etiquette that goes along with owning a car. When you are a vehicle owner, you need to be cognizant of other people around you. For instance, if your oil needs to be changed, are you going to change your oil in your driveway where all of the neighbors can see? How would you feel if you came home the next day and saw all of your neighbors changing the oil in their cars in their driveways?

If you absolutely must change the oil in your car, then you should try to do it during a time when there aren’t quite as many people out such as the early morning or later at night. Something like this shouldn’t really be a problem because changing the oil in your car isn’t something that is noisy. The only thing that you have to be aware of is that you are as careful as you can be while actually changing your oil because it can spill and stain the roadway.

Another thing that people need to be aware of is the fact that there is a time and place to take care of your car maintenance. One time, there was a man who moved into my parents’ neighborhood and actually opened up his own mechanic’s garage out of his home. The way that we found out was when we started to hear him working on his cars in the middle of the night. It was only a matter of time before we were able to see him actually working on his vehicles out of his garage. Inside of his garage, he had actually built a lift to put the cars on so that he could work on them. What he didn’t seem to factor in, however, was the fact that there were other people living in the neighborhood with him. What would happen if everyone in the neighborhood started their own car mechanic’s business out of their garage? I think you would find that the neighborhood would start heading downhill soon.

Before you start to think about working on your car or other vehicle, consider other variables such as the cleanliness and appeal of your neighborhood. You also need to consider the rules for the area that you live in. For instance, did you know that there are rules for certain neighborhoods that dictate the types of vehicles that you can keep outside on your property, when you can water your lawn as well as whether or not you can own a motorcycle or other loud vehicle? Most neighborhoods do not allow you to keep boats on your property while others will allow you to have a boat as long as it is in the backyard and covered.

Check and see what the rules are for the area that you live in. If you are unsure, ask a neighbor or check with your town council or other governing official. Maintaining your car is something that you have to do, but it shouldn’t be done on your property.

To compete in one of the world’s most difficult rally events, the 2007 TransSyberian Rally, Porsche Cars of North America (PCNA) will be fielding three specially prepared Cayennes. Beginning August 3, and covering 3,850 miles of forest, desert, mountains, and plains, the route will pit the Cayennes against 47 other entrants on the 15 day expedition from Moscow to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia.

The 2008 Porsche Cayenne S TransSyberia vehicles used for the rally have had a set of special safety equipment added in preparation for the rally. Based on the standard Cayenne S, the race vehicles remain mechanically identical to their street-bound parent right down to the stock 4.8-liter, 385 horsepower V-8 engine. Each participant is fitted with a full rollcage along with racing-style seatbelts, auxiliary lighting, and skid plates, among other features.

The rally will be composed of two teams from the U.S. and one from Canada. Meaning, the three entrants will be divided into three separate teams with two drivers on each team. Rod Millen, Jeff Zwart, and Paul Dallenbach — all former winners in various disciplines, are among the employed drivers for the event.

The North American teams will compete against entries from Europe, South and Central America and Asia, including other teams driving Porsche Cayenne S TransSyberias.

Visit www.porsche.com/all/Transsyberia2007/international.aspx for more information on the TransSyberian Rally or the Porsches entrants.

The team lineups from Porsche include Team USA 1, Team USA 2, and Team Canada.

Team USA 1 is composed of Rod Millen and Richard Kelsey. Millen has won rally championships on three continents. He has reached a class win at the 24 Hours of Daytona and led the Mickey Thompson Off-Road Racing series winning the truck title three years in a row. He is also a multi-time overall winner of the famous Pike’s Peak Hill Climb. Kelsey has won both as a driver and co-driver at the Baja 1000, The Pike’s Peak Hill Climb and the SCCA National Rally Championship.

Team USA 2 is composed of Jeff Zwart and Paul Dallenbach. Between the two, the team has accumulated nine overall and class championships at the Pike’s Peak Hill Climb, the 2nd oldest race in the U.S. Moreover, Zwart has been a U.S. Open Class PRO Rally champion and a class-winner at the abhorrent Baja 1000. Meanwhile, Dallenbach is a three-time winner of the Alcan Rally and a racer in almost every professional road-race series in SCCA and IMSA.

Team Canada is composed of Kees Nierop and Laurance Yap. Nierop has bagged the overall win in the legendary 12 Hours of Sebring aside from many other endurance racing wins. He was a Rothman’s Porsche Cup champion, and co-drove the Porsche 961 (the racing version of the iconic Porsche 959) for the factory team. Yap is an award-winning journalist and photographer from Toronto, Canada who writes for publications like Driven, the Toronto Star and CanadianDriver.Com.

Aside from producing quality Porsche Boxter parts, Porsche has also proven their worth in the field of racing.

Ferdinand Porsche played an important role in the development of airplanes and racing cars, and the construction of tanks for the Wehrmacht. He is an automobile engineer with more than a thousand patents to his name. He was appointed chief engineer at Mercedes-Benz in Stuttgart in the 1920s. Later on, he set up his own engineering workshop and designed among others the Volkswagen. At the plant where Volkswagen was made, Wolfsburg, he was chief of operations and at the end of the war he was interned by the Allies.

He was released a few years later and started building his first car with his son, Ferry Porsche. The car was named the Porsche 356 and it was a sports car and a reminiscent of the Volkswagen. It had the same four-cylinder boxer engine that was rear-mounted, just like the VW. It was far from being a powerful sports car, developing only 40 bhp and a maximum speed of 87 mph (140 km/h). First produced as a convertible and later as a hard top it distinguished by the very elegant and innovative body. It was developed in the workshop of Erwin Komenda, a master of restrained streamlining who had been in charge of sheet metal and design techniques at Porsche since the VW Beetle. The new style of closed coupe was designed by Komenda and it soon became the embodiment of the sports car, thanks to its fastback.

This tradition was continued by Komenda and Ferdinand “Butzi” Porsche, the founder’s grandson, with the 911.

The 911 became easily recognizable: it had attractive sloping bonnet and what later became characteristic “frog eye” headlights, curves running from the top edge of the windscreen to the rear bumper and a straight waistline. From a functional and technical point of view it was more like BMW 1500, although it retained the stylistic features of the original Porsche. The new 911 will become the foundation stone of Porsche’s identity, even though the design was not always appreciated. During the 1970`s and 1980`s, the designers attempts to distance Porsche from its legendary design brought the company to the edge of disaster. The more modern 924 model, “a people’s Porsche”, developed with Volkswagen, as well as the 928 were far from fulfilling the expectations.

In the 1990`s, the company realized that what for over twenty years was perceived as a straitjacket, it was in fact a market advantage. During the 1990`s, Porsche became highly profitable since they now knew that the typical Porsche features were timeless. Nearly forty people now worked in the design department on further developments of the long-running 911. These developments included the 911 GTI, a powerful combination of sports and racing car, put forward by the in-house designer Anthony R. Hatter. In 1999, chief designer proudly presented the new Boxster which enabled Porshe to establish a second independent range of models.