like any manufacturer of a wearable items (cars are wearable), BMW is relying on returning customers as well as new customers... They are fortunate to have a customer base that unites into clubs (BMW CCA), and maintains active online presense, such as this forum, such as e46fanatics, rubmw.ru, and many many others... people who don't have a BMW want to buy one, people who have a BMW want buy another one... this is how brands make their names...

we all remember the Jaguars of the 80-s and 90-s, that were plagued with electrical problems, almost killed their sales in the US... they have turned around, did not completely recover, but still in the US market... FIAT is trying to come back... Alpha Romeo is gone from one of the most lucrative markets, and the french brands are not even on the radar...

BMW worked really hard to build its reputation, and spoiling it over an engine that they have in their warehouses, that costs less than the advertizing budget to bring in a new customer... that is ridiculous... When i was working at AT&T, the saying was that AT&T spends about $300 per each new customer to bring into the folds of the company, so it was cheaper for us to retain a customer that was already an AT&T customer than to bring in a new one...

imagine, BMW spends millions on the ads in order to bring in new customers... money spent for a new engine is nothing, but the impact and ripple effect on the forums - immeasurable... People are still talking about the goodwill replacements that BMW did, and even though i havenot heard any recent stories, those legends surrounding the mark, they make it stronger...

BMW was the inventing force behind the backstory of The HIRE - when a dude actually won a Z4 (i think it was Z4) just for watchng the online series and uncovering a gameplot... that still has folks talking about it...

my point is, lets hope that the BMW NA gets on it... and we are not asking for freebies, most of us support the brand by buying the parts and services, some manage to buy brand new cars, i just recently had a lease with BMW FS... what we want is a reciprocal gesture of loyalty back to us... If you note, i had chain guides fail on my 4.6iS, but i never asked for any help from BMW NA, as i should have caught the failure before it was catastrophic... in Lex situation, it is different - we do not know what was the cause, and that is scary!!!