View Single Post
      03-15-2017, 10:22 PM   #20
champignon
Disrupter
champignon's Avatar
United_States
1562
Rep
2,484
Posts

Drives: 1M;Z3M Cp;135is Vert, 996TT
Join Date: Jun 2015
Location: Idaho

iTrader: (0)

I have a little bit of an update on my own 1M and its airbag recall that might interest other owners of BMWs that started out as Canadian cars and are now in the USA. I have had a bit more difficulty getting my car into the US system than Nacho has had.

My car was a German delivery car picked up by its owner from Toronto, while on a European trip in late 2011. Perhaps this European delivery has some relationship to the problems I've had. The car was sold by a 2nd hand dealer located in Montreal, through ebay, and ultimately delivered to me in Idaho with a title from Indiana and the import taxes already having been paid. The cluster was converted to miles prior to export, by a BMW dealer in Montreal.

I did not have any issues with registering the car related to liens or anything similar to that, likely because the car was already titled to a US State when I received it. It did take about 2 months to get Idaho to register the vehicle, because they were extremely anal about the odometer reading given that the cluster had been changed. I now think that this was a total non issue in reality, because the car can go back and forth between miles and kms using the car's setup menu, and all that was really changed was the analog indicator showing mph and kmh, as opposed to just kmh in the Canadian version.

Since registering the vehicle, I have received about 3 certificates of compliance from BMW of the USA, plus have more recently done the warranty guarantee form with them. Still, the car doesn't really show up on the BMW of the USA systems, although somehow my dealer has at least some information on the car showing on their internal systems.

After Nacho successfully got his airbag replaced, I started working again on BMW of the USA, first with the guarantee of warranty form, and later with repeated phone calls. About 2 weeks ago the person I dealt with suggested that we "escalate" this request within the BMW of USA system, which I agreed to. About 10 days ago I received a very nice call while I was driving my 135i coupe en route to Boise for work, and the woman I spoke with told me that there was no recall on my car! She said she had checked with BMW of Canada, and also in their own system, and my airbag was not recalled.

To that I said, "that's very interesting, but then I must have the only 1-Series car made that does not have the offending, defective, airbag in it! Could you please tell me what type of airbag is in my car? After all, if you know that a Takata airbag is in the cars being recalled, and my car does not have that but instead has an XYZ airbag in it, you might need to contact me later if the XYZ airbags are recalled!" She had no answer for that but could see the obvious point I was making. She said she would research further and call me back.

She did call me back a few days later and said they were still researching my car and that she would call me again in a few days, which she did today. On today's call she said that my airbag definitely DID need to be replaced, that it was in fact being recalled, and that she would work on a solution and get back to me in another few days.

I have no doubt that they will ultimately work this out and get me a new airbag.

The reason I am posting this is that others who have imported BMWs into the USA from Canada may have similar problems with recalls, for airbags or whatever else comes down the pike. You need to be persistent, because BMW obviously does not have very good or very comprehensive systems for following these cars as they cross international boundaries.
Appreciate 0