I was planning to order a 2011 X5M. After reading this thread I am having second thoughts. I had an E70 4.8i. It was very good and reasonably trouble free. Right now my summer car is in storage and I am roughing it with a 2007 328 touring.

There have only been about 4-5 cars, according to BMWNA, that have been effected by this. So, I don't think it is a wide spread issue. It is not effecting my decision to get a replacement X5M, which is what I want.

4-5 with this issue, half a dozen with the whiring, vanos issue with mine and this is only what we know about, how many Ms do they make a year, 200? This is a terrible percentage of cars with problems, if the Chevy Impala had a similar percentage you'd have 8000 cars with faults pro rata.

That said I am having a replacement but I doubt they would have given me the money back anyway, I am having to wait until March for my replacement so I'm roughing it in a 2010 X6 3.0D

There are well more than 200 a year made. Not sure of the numbers but my guess is maybe 5% of total annual production? Maybe 5K to 10K a year? Again this is just a guess. Remember people typically with perfect cars don't complain so if you were to add up all the unique people here that have had a serious issue. Myself included, though I do not consider the whining a serious issue as it never had any impact on the performance or usability of the car.. then I think you would be suprised to see how few the numbers are. Take that number multiply it by 20 for people having issues that don't subscribe or post to any thread and you would likley see the overall percentage is very small... Owning one I would never discourgae someone who was interested in one to look elsewhere. Bottom line it is a fabulous vehicle.
I feel for the people here that have had or are having issues as I was one of those at one time with another vehicle. I do know first hand how frustrating it is to not have your car. But at the same time we should not automatically conclude that they are all bad and not recommend them. Remember we need to sell these things someday....

If you dig around I think you'll find your 5-10k estimate is orders of magnitude out, the estimated combined production numbers for the X5M and X6M for MY2010 was circa 150 for North America although I heard it reached nearly 200, probably similar for the whole of europe. I was told only 15 MY2010 cars were registered in the UK this year. BMW only sold 1146 M cars accross the whole BMW range in Jan 2010, the X5 M is rare.

Its not about putting people off, I'm not shouting don't buy an X5 M but I am saying there are too many engine issues for the amount of units produced, there is either something wrong with quality control or the design is inherently faulty, I don't know which it is but either way its not good on a vehicle of this value.

Like I said it's a guess, But 150 for the US, has to be exponentially more than that. I had the first 2010 in the state of Washington and now I know there to be probably close to 20. Thats one state with only 4 dealers. Imagine how many must be in California alone. I just guessed knowing they make what 200K X5's wordwide per year. So 5 to 10K of those being M's didn't sound too farfetched. Anyways I agree with you it sucks that there are problems but I have to believe it is not the entire lot of them.

There are way more than 200 sold in US, come on now it is not a ferrari

I see far more ferraris in the UK than X5 Ms, I think many people think there are loads of Ms just because there are loads of X5s, it is a rare car and there aren't as many made as you would think.

maybe because ferrari's were made over last 50 years and X5M for just 1 year?? There is about 10 of us on this forum alone, trust me BMW would not put the R&D into a car to be sold with the numbers you quoting.

The BMW M division reported around 15,000 vehicles last year for total sales. They don't break down production of each model, but they do say that their business is spread across M models, Individual models, M Sport packages, and Driving Experiences. If we assume that the M Sport packages and Individual vehicles are counted by other divisions, then the 15,000 is 1250 M vehicles per month, similar to reported January 2010 sales of 1146 M vehicles. That article talked about how M sales were holding up despite a global slowdown in auto sales, and that fits from these figures.

We know from published BMW figures that the E60 M5 ran at 4100 per year, and the M3 at more than that. We have a figure for the E90 of 32,000 since 2007, a rather imprecise period, so around 8000 - 11,000 per year, which fits with the M5 numbers. If you put in the M6, which I haven't seen figures for, and subtract all these from the 15,000 in 2009, there isn't room for more many X5Ms per year.

Edit: Found the M6 figures in a separate press release. 14,152 in 5 years, so almost 3000 per year.

Standard X5s are not 200,000 per year, closer to 100,000. The plant produced 8800 in October. US sales have been reported at 3000 per month.

Corrections and additions to the numbers are more than welcome.