My uncle has an 04 its an ugly car and he has had a few problems, Also the dealer srvice has been bad really bad. And an oil change tkes 24hours because the car has to be hooked to a computer he likes my moms LS430 much better.

 

You're kidding. BMW has computerized the car THAT much that you can't even change the OIL without electronics? I know that newer Bimmers have a computer device that keeps track of miles and driving conditions and calculates the oil change interval but I didn't know the computer regulated it that much. What does it do.....control an internal spring-lock inside the crankcase drain plug that doesn't allow you to loosen it until the computer un-triggers it?

 

Watch this classic video.
http://www.mytired.net/Collection/MT...eriesProbs.wmv

 

Very informative!!Damn..back to reality I guess..

 

Im not sure exactly what it does but my aunt says that the car had to dowload some type of information so it was hooked to a computer overnight so that all the electronics can function properly. You may want to ask a BMW technician what was going on. Fo their car what started as a oil change turned into the dealer having there car for a little over a week.

 

I personally love the look of this car and was pretty excited at the offer I was given to drive one..I thought the response to this model would be different.Not that its a bad thing thing cause information is key and Im definitely more informed now..I guess its like the cute hottie at the club with the banging body who has to see the shrink twice a week ..Well maybe not cause you still do her,just dont marry her ..Im gonna think real hard on giving up my GS that hasnt given me a problem yet for a"chick with issues"..

 

i had a 745li 2002

not a very reliable car.. i had the first tranny to be replaced in that car in the country.. dealer had it for 2 months.. oil change was not overnight either..i hear the 04' s and newer are better

 

i also heard of the mad electrical problems as well as severe engine failure maybe rominl can chime in on that to explain more ???

 

Heck, twenty years ago you could change the oil on a bimmer but the computer needed a reset code to know that the oil had been changed. When bimmer started that, you were just screwed unless you liked driving around with the computer constantly telling you to have the car serviced. It was a red warning light and I was familiar enough to know where they were on all the models. Around 75% of the bimmers around here were being driven with the light on as people refused to pay bimmer prices for oil changes. Then it became possible to buy the reset tool and reset the computer yourself. I don't know if bimmer has changed the computer to force you back to them for oil changes but would that surprise anyone? Then they have a chance to sell you their latest deal on detailing or teflon sealant or valve stem rechroming.

 

The chick wih issues analogy is used by german car owners all the time. They compare owning a Lexus to dating the steady reliable girl who is boring....and not very hot. They compare german car ownership to dating a very hot chick who is high maintenance but well worth it.

I happen to love the looks of the 745 before the mild refreshening. Yes, they have issues but everytime you walk out toward it, I'll bet they seem so small. Just look at one with fat 20's, lips big enough to swim in. Looks cool as heck. I'd take a chance as long as you have a warranty.

 

So that you can visit your dealership often to admire the beauty of your car on a lift...free of charge under warranty, of course.

 

One of my friend was the first I know personally who has an 04. Nothing major with mechanical problems. I believe the trunk and driver's door pneumatic weren't working properly. Car was stuttering/hesistating/some kind of idling problem. It was fixed with a software update. Yeah, too much computer related that you need to update a car software for repair
Imagine if cars were running on microsoft

Anyways, my brother in law's 05 745 is fine so far. It does have dashboard creaking near the doors. Seems like the whole car is twisting/flexing when it goes up/down a curb and dash creaks.
The paint on the idrive is wearing out though
BTW I told my brother in law to get the extended warranty

In summary, get an 04 or newer.
The 7 drives really good though. Take a sharp u-turn and you'll see

 

the 05 looks nearly identical to the 03...only diffrences is headlightd and trunk

 

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=95885

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~dorianm/acade...bmw745bug.html

http://news.zdnet.com/5208-3513-0.ht...11870&start=-1

http://www.baselinemag.com/print_art...a=35839,00.asp

Consider BMW and its luxury 745i sedan. First released in Europe in November of 2001, the car contains around 70 microprocessors. Its most striking feature, iDrive, is what Car and Driver magazine classifies as a "miracle ****." This single element of the dashboard is designed, through a computerized console, to replace more than 200 buttons that control everything from the position of seats to aspects of the navigation of the car itself to climate, communications and entertainment systems.

The iDrive is powered in part by the stripped down version of Microsoft's operating system for personal computers known as Windows CE. Theoretically, Beemer drivers can adjust anything, move forward and not take their eyes off the road. But that assumes that iDrive is working.
A Worldwide Recall

Gary Conley, a retired executive in Silicon Valley, is now driving his second BMW 745i. But it's not because the first one worked that well.

His first car had so many problems that BMW bought it back last July. This buy-back followed a worldwide recall in May of 15,000 7-series cars, and a second recall in July of 286 vehicles by BMW Korea. The Korea Times cited a software bug in the electronic management unit of the vehicle's fuel pump that could make the engine stall. BMW spokesman Gordon Keil says certain cars stalled if the fuel tank was below 1/3, although this was not a problem that Conley ever reported.

Conley says his second car works better than his first one. For example, when it creeps along the road, it does not automatically brake without using the brake lights, as the first one was prone to do. But it still has intermittent problems that BMW can't reproduce or fix. The voice activation system sometimes fails, the transmission slips, the phone may fail to power up, and the iDrive settings have spontaneously disappeared and switched to metric units.

Indeed, Conley became so frustrated with BMW that he posted videos of his errant car, along with his most recent repair records, on the Web. (Click here for a collection of several of these links.) Out of 24 problems cited by Conley in December, his dealer was able to find and fix only three of them, despite help from U.S. headquarters in New Jersey.

"BMW tried to do too many things at once with this car, and they underestimated the software problem," says Conley, who built test equipment for semiconductors as the CEO of EPRO Corp., which sold to Credence Corp. of Fremont, CA, in 1995. "Only two-thirds of hardware has been unleashed by software. There are so many predecessors and dependencies within software that it's like spaghetti-ware. It's not that easy to get all these little components to plug and play."

Conley's situation may be unusual, but not unique. "About a month after I took the car, my iDrive system totally failed," says Ron Burke, a partner in the law firm of Brand Brand & Burke in New York City. "This left me able to drive the car, but unable to operate the radio, telephone or navigation system. BMW explained that it would take a long time to fix it because only a few people were qualified to address the problem. But they did fix it and it's worked ever since."

BMW's Keil says the company has sold over 22,000 of the 745's—a 64% increase over the previous 7-series—and has many happy customers. He says that BMW will work with Conley until he, too, is happy, although he questions whether some of Conley's problems could be solved if Conley had better instruction on how to use the car. For example, Keil says, the car's instrument clusters will reset themselves if the battery is low. Keil also says BMW has done "extensive testing" of the 745's.

Auto industry expert Dennis Virag, president of the Automotive Consulting Group Inc., says the problem is not customer ignorance, but industry carelessness. In the race to add glitzy amenities like navigation, Virag says, auto manufacturers are contracting out the development of immature and faulty software. "The auto industry is highly regulated, and these are not mission-critical systems," he says. "But companies like Microsoft can't do to the auto industry what they did to the PC industry. You can't play Russian Roulette every time you stick the key into the ignition."

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/bmw_misc.html

But hey, you can tell people on the internet your car is .3 seconds faster on the track you never go to and you have soul, they don't.

 

My dreams are crushed.. I figured Mike the Bimmer expert would show up soon ..Damn I wanna like this car but cant ignore wjat you guys have told me..I guess the best way to salvage this would be to get an 04 which in my case means waiting till next year unless I get a proven 03.I would have access to service records so I can narrow it down..I guess if anything could screw up a Bimmer..it would be Windows..Damn..a BSOD at 75mph wouldnt be good and waiting for a patch is hilarious..