I bet you'll be able to source matching bits from Chinese sources not a week after the screws appear on the market.
Nobody learned anything from "Tamper Resistent" Tory.
this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2025
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This just means in order to remove them at home, you have to buy a special screwdriver.
Nintendo did this for decades, and it was still super easy to obtain the special screwdriver for their special screws.
BMW is essentially the Apple of cars. Is has the same cult-like following too.
The BMW-driver stereotypes are real too.
I have a 99 Z3 what I got for 2500 bucks. The top is good and most of the shit works for the most part. I drive it and have fun. I can say that while it is a fun car I would have never bought it if I could have found a Miata in that condition for that same price. I did learn my lesson. The parts for that thing are way more then they should be. I wish I had looked a little harder for a Miata.
I knew exactly one BMW driver in my life, he was a marketing firm executive, looked like a character from Better Call Saul. I was in charge of marketing for a small company that I lied to about my qualifications and ended up a VP of marketing, so this guy comes roaring up one day and parks across two spaces in his BMW convertable, cigar in mouth, aviator shades, cheap suit and loud tie, he just always wanted to "make things happen."
Absolute cartoon character. I have to say I kind of loved every interaction, it was like a recurring character on a sitcom.
Anyway, about all I remember was him complaining how hard it was to get the thing serviced and the wheels alone set him back the cost of another car.
I hated marketing, but I also hated the unemployment that followed when the housing market bubble burst and suddenly nobody had money anymore.
I give that about a week after it comes out, before you can buy compatible socket wrenches on AliExpress.
Exactly, this whole article is stupid and I kinda like the little fasteners.
I'll buy a set of these screwdrivers for $10 and put them in my speciality tool drawer and call it a day.
No problems here.
You shouldn't have to?
From the standpoint of anybody reasonably handy, we all know we can buy tools. Any time I see a discarded or abused tool I'll salvage it just because I know I can grind or channel out the head to make custom drivers. That's not the problem.
It's that the company is going to use this as a play to illegally monopolize and stifle competition.
Yeah, like those security lug nuts. Guess what, guys?
We've had two vehicles come with them. I remove them the first time I have a wheel off for some reason.
I wouldn't say the security wheel nuts are entirely useless.
Although a set is only about $25 on Amazon, it does limit the pool of potential wheel thieves to serious professionals who are looking for something more valuable to justify buying and carrying multiple sets of these around.
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I've got a set of 20-something security bits from there, all the anti interference stuff all in one place.
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Fuck them then. The line in the sand has been drawn and we want to fix our shit without corporate intervention. I was always too poor to own one anyway.
I wonder how that got past the prior art. I mean Robocop referenced shooting yourself in the dick back in the 1980s.
Hooray, more tools to buy.
Sure wish we could just have a single standard shape and size.
How about standard hex in metric and be done with it?
That's why I bought a metric tap and die, anywhere I run into stupidity I can just re-thread and put a better bolt in.
My hero 🥹
Hex is kinda ass, either square or star/torx
Stripping is almost always user error and i personally don't like torx. But I'm down for any of them if made a singular a standard!
Maybe user error, but hex comes in both us and metric metric and the difference is often just tight enough to strip it or loose enough you can pound it in with a hammer. Torx only comes in 1 scale.
What do you personally take issue with?
That's true.
I just dont like the feel of using them and I've also broken multiple of the small torx bits.
But realistically i don't care what standard is chosen as long as there was one.
I've broken some cheap bits. Anything that costs more than "suspect" has impressed me.
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People need to stop buying BMWs, they seem to always be the first to introduce some new bullshit.
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Literally not even a novel design and in my opinion, not patentable.
Didn't Audi edit: try some similarly outrageous stunt about 25 years ago? Something like no user access to the engine compartment at all? As in go to the dealer to have them remove the front of your car and refill your washer fluid. I remember that went over like a limestone cloud and I don't think they pulled the trigger on that design. Car people, where are you?
You're probably thinking of the A2 service hatch. It's nothing like that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_A2
I bet that the goal here is to try to abuse trademark law to sue anyone who makes compatible bits because it's embedding the trademarked BMW logo. I also bet that courts won't buy into it.
EDIT: Well, I bet that US courts won't buy into it. Dunno about other jurisdictions, what case law is there.
Back in the 1990s, you had Sega v. Accolade, where Sega tried making their consoles not work with a game unless that game had copyrighted and trademarked content at the beginning, with the idea that nobody could legally make games compatible with their consoles without Sega's approval, and a court said "nice try, but no".
EDIT2:
The court then went on to cite Anti-Monopoly v. General Mills Fun Group, which states in reference to the Lanham Act, "The trademark is misused if it serves to limit competition in the manufacture and sales of a product. That is the special province of the limited monopolies provided pursuant to the patent laws."[9] The judges in the case had decided that Sega had violated this provision of the act by utilizing its trademark to limit competition for software for its console.
EDIT3: Oh, they patented it, too. I still bet that that's going to run into anti-trust law.
Basically what Nintendo did on one of their schemes to prevent unauthorized software (Famicom Disk System, which was a floppy disk drive for the Japanese version of the NES). This was the physical Nintendo logo embossed on to floppy disk and with a flat disk instead, the disk can't be physically loaded (sort of, you can add extra cut outs). Other game systems required a logo or similar other brand/trademark/IP to be present in the game code in order to boot, so if you wanted to make your own game without Nintendo's blessing, you had to invlude their IP in your physical disk or in the game code just to get it to boot. This BMW patent seems to be in the spirit of those hard and software protections that prevent people from doing what they want with the hardware (car) they bought.
a-hole drivers, a-hole companies not surprised.
Does that mean it'll be a free dealership service? If you can't service them yourself or have an off brand replacement, doesn't the company have to provide it?
Thanks for letting me know to never buy a BMW!
it will probably limit 3rd parties for a short time, until they purchase the tool that is required
or someone reverse engineers a tool that doesn't violate some trademark
these things never stay in one parties control for long
I think the issue is with how many hoops you want to jump through in order to fix BMWs, specifically.
If I'm running an auto-repair shop and I already need specialty kits and tools for more common vehicles, why am I going to invest in one for a far more niche brand? And if the number of non-dealership repair centers for BMWs dry up, the pool of people skilled in repair go with it.
It's a death spiral for the brand as a whole, in pursuit of marginal increase in dealership based repairs.
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Man, fuck BMW, they're a shitty company to do business with. Worse than Audi even and that's a tall order.
I'm sure a bored steel worker somewhere can crank out a bit in 10 minutes
Just another tool for the mechanic to stock. They'll be on eBay and Amazon soon enough.
Having 8 million single use tools sure does get annoying and expensive..
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