Brakes - They are like sponges in mine, when they wear out I'm going to look at putting better brake pads on

Heating - Takes forever to warm up plus the whole heating system is a bit rubbish, on cold days if I have the air recycling on the whole car mist up. So I have a choice of choking from fumes or not being able to see...... never had this one in a car before, If I have it on anything other then auto for too long it mist up. It may be an issue with mine that I may need to get looked at.

Brakes- I have heard of some complaints about the brakes, but mine are very firm and very powerful for a family car and give me a lot of confidence.

Heating- Diesels always take forever to warm up, for that reason I am surprised that you had a BMW diesel that warmed up quickly. Perhaps a smaller engine with turbos working hard might warm up quicker.

I have never had a car that didn't mist up if the heater was left on air recycling, especially on a damp day. If the air conditioning is also going, then it might cope with all the moisture that will gather in the car, but it may not. The system could be overwhelmed.

I agree that the Aircon system works well on auto setting, but can be difficult to set up manually. For that reason I always leave it on auto.

My e60 525d warms up within a few minutes, obviously the engine isn't warm but the blowers are!

Really tempted to change to a used new shape Superb though!

Made a similar jump from a 330i to a 1.8TSI. Of course the VAG engine is no match for the inline 6, but it's an extremely comfortable and practical car. Only thing i wish it had (and miss about the BMW) was RWD.