Do I just have a bad X5d?

[Wolfgang Gullich]

I purchased my '11 X5d as a CPO car with 42K on the clock.

When I got the car, it had a couple issues the dealer needed to fix off the bat. One was a scratch on a fender (not a mechanical issue) and the infamous cracked EGR cooler (known issue on 2011 and earlier X5ds).

Everything was fine for a while, then 1800 miles out of the full, factory warranty, the passenger-side headlight had a stepper motor failure. It was fixed as a Good-Faith repair but would have cost $2400 in parts alone if I had to foot the bill. BMW doesn't want their dealers replacing a $40 motor when they can charge 60 times more.

Well, forward to a couple months ago, and I started to smell toasted motor oil, a smell I'm quite familiar with having owned several air-cooled Volkswagens in the past. I suspected it was one of the turbos, but the dealer found the front diff to be leaking. Again, BMW opted to replaced the entire unit rather than the seals. A $40 repair on my 2010 Jeep Wrangler would have been $1800 in parts on the BMW as the seals are not replaceable...talk about a flawed design.

About 2 weeks before Christmas, the throttle valve actuator died. Another flawed design. The seal on the servo seeps allowing oil from PCV blow-by to fry the circuit board that controls it. Allegedly, that part was redesigned, but only time will tell.

So, 2 weeks ago, we're leaving my inlaws in the Sierras and the windshield squirters die. The pumps hum, but only a flacid spurt of windshield fluid hits the front and rear windscreens. And as of today, the toasted oil smell is back. And guess what? some nice, glistening oil can be seen on the low-pressure turbo through the gap between the heat shield and high-pressure turbo.

I'm dropping it off today expecting it to be fixed next week sometime. There's no reason a car that stickered for $63K should have these types of issues.

Is my X5d just a bad seed? Or par for the course? I absolutely love driving it and we're also on our 3rd MINI (also a BMW product) and have never had any issues on any of those cars...