Driveshaft recall

[shark715]

Originally Posted by shark715

As to your first question, again the service advisor explained that BMW expects only a small percentage of the driveshafts to break, and that's why there is an extended warranty on my car versus a recall. I have to say that when he told me this it was almost like he was reading from a canned script.

Sounds like this was a bean counter decision, that someone figured out it would be less expensive for them to repair the ones that break, even with the collateral damage, versus recalling them all. Obviously they are not very concerned that some of their customers are going to end up stranded on the side of the road.

I do plan to file a complaint with NHTSA once this entire episode is complete and I know the whole story. I'm not sure that this would have potentially caused loss of control of the car. What's most scary is that I saw that at least one owner reported that the broken driveshaft punctured a hole in the floor pan of his car.

BMW has pulled this kind of crap before. The early mini coopers had well documented substantial premature failure rates of the electric power steering pumps. We owned one of them. You would be driving, and all the sudden there was no power steering, and of course the car became much harder to control. Don't know what could be more safety related than that.

BMW quietly redesigned the pump, leaving the owners of cars with the original pump to fend for themselves, the replacement cost being about $1400-$1500, and never warning the owners of the potential danger.

Years later the Canadian government finally went after BMW regarding this, and shortly after the federal government followed them.

It was something like seven years after we paid to have the pump replaced that BMW reimbursed us. Even though we no longer owned the car, we heard about the reimbursement program through one of the Mini owners forums, and for some reason we still had the dealer service order showing that the pump was replaced.

Would you believe that BMW tried to deny our claim because they said we had no proof that we actually paid the bill. I went ballistic, and started calling their executive offices here in New Jersey and pestering them until we finally received the reimbursement check.

After my experiences with BMW I really believe that they have a company culture of being unethical. And after seeing with Volkswagen did, I have to wonder if the issue is rampant throughout the German automobile industry.

They were able to procure a new transmission in just two days, and the repair was finished yesterday. Picked it up this morning and so far everything is fine, although probably tomorrow I'll have a look for myself underneath.

Based on the part number shown on the receipt, the "new" transmission they gave us is not "new", but merely a rebuilt unit.

The BMW list price for the rebuilt unit is more than $9000, and the price for a brand new unit exceeds $14000, although discounts exceeding 15% seem to be plentiful on line. I wonder if the beancounters are re-thinking their decision not to recall these cars (and at the very least just inspect them) versus doing nothing and seeing how many break.

No response on our request to be reimbursed for the $169 towing bill yet.