Becasue of my concern over the need for the "performance package" that BMW is offering to improve the struts, I had my car inspected. I had noticed that my structs were domed which was an indication of the reported problem. In addition, my hood is slightly mis-aligned (I have a picture of it posted in the "Frame Forum"). BMW did a very thorough 3 hours inspection and sent me a report. It stated "... no frame damage, nosigns of impact and no cracked welds around the struct supports, however the structs are slightly domed upward ...". They blame this condition on the car "bottoming out". And this in turn caused the misalignment of the hood. Therefore, they consider this as a result of road hazards and not any defect inmaterial or workmanship. They also recommended that the structs be repaired.
BMW states that in order to fix these problems I will need to ship the car to NJ or South Carolina to have the struct brought back to the original condition and to have the hood re-aligned. The BMW body shop is working up an estimate for this work.
I live in Long Island, New York and Boynton Beach, Florida. The car is only on paved roads. Florida roads are nice and smooth. New York roads do have potholes from the change in seasons. But I can't beleive that it would be so easy to "bottom out" the car in a pothole - and only cause struct doming and no other damage to the car.
I certainly do not know if the performance package installation would have prevented the struct doming and hood mis-alignment that I reported.
Needless to say, I am livid over this entire situation. After spending over $180K for a car, putting on 23.4K miles, I can't beleive that a pothole was enough to damage the structs and mis-align the hood. And I think I would certainly remember hitting a pothole so hard that it would damage the structs and hood. I don't recall any pothole that would have been this bad. How could this car so easily "bottom out" and be damaged, with no other frame, suspension, alignment or cracks in the car?
I would like to hear what my fellow board members think of this situation.