Rollaway BMWs: The Issue Won't Go Away Easily. Just Ask Ford!

BMW has a big headache on its hands. On Aug. 5, the federal safety agency NHTSA opened an investigation into whether 120,000 7-Series cars with electronic shifters could fail to shift into park and roll away. Ford's horrendous slipping-out-of-park experience in the 70s and early 80s is a pretty clear indication that BMW won't get away clean here.

There haven't been any serious accidents related to this -- it's not in the same league as Toyota's hugely damaging runaway car problem -- but it's definitely got BMW's attention.

Publicity surrounding the NHTSA investigation is likely to bring out copycat complaints, and the fact that the problem involves a complicated electronic component that's supposed to make shifting decisions on its own virtually ensures this will drag on for a while. Phalanxes of lawyers are likely to get involved. Even if the preliminary investigation leads nowhere, it's likely that questions will be left in consumers' minds just as BMW is widening its lead over Mercedes as the top-selling import luxury brand.

Tom Plucinsky, a company spokesman, told me:

The BMW statement at this stage is very simple: This is a preliminary evaluation and we are fully cooperating with NHTSA. The vast majority of NHTSA preliminary investigations never warrant escalation to become [more serious] engineering analyses, and fewer still ultimately become a recall. We are confident that the 7-Series transmission doesn't have a mind of its own.

This transmission makes decisions
According to the safety agency, its office of defects investigation received a rollaway complaint about a 2006 7-Series with a column-mounted electronic shifter that "is designed to automatically shift the vehicle to park under a variety of conditions, including after the driver has pressed the ignition button to turn the engine off." And it says that field reports describe other incidents in 2002-2008 7-Series cars with that transmission option (Plucinsky says there aren't many cases). No cause has been identified.

In the complaint recorded on NHTSA's website, a 750i owner says he hit the stop button, but on two occasions the car rolled anyway and the second time crashed into a lamp post. The dealer was baffled as to the cause. It's going to be very hard to prove one way or the other whether owners actually hit that button, or just say they did. That kind of ambiguity short-circuited Toyota's repeated efforts to put the runaway car issue behind it.

Plucinsky told me that BMW's electronic transmission has a "car wash" feature: If the owner shifts into neutral and turns the engine off with the power button, it stays in neutral and thus could roll. Plucinsky said that might be happening in some of these cases, but good luck getting owners to admit to misbehavior.

Ford's lingering problem
BMW undoubtedly wants this to get resolved quickly, but it may not happen. Ford -- at the time just getting over the exploding Pinto issue -- twisted in the wind for a decade (mid-'70s to mid-'80s) over its "park to reverse" problems. The Center for Auto Safety said that the transmission defect led to 23,000 complaints to NHTSA, 6,000 accidents, 1,710 injuries and 98 fatalities.

The issue got huge publicity: In 1978, ABC News showed a Ford being set off by a slamming garage door and slipping into reverse. Mother Jones magazine claimed in 1980 that Ford had known about the problem for at least 10 years, and Ralph Nader got involved.

Some 21 million cars had the controversial transmissions, and a recall would have been huge. NHTSA officially determined that a defect existed in 1980, and a recall seemed likely, but in the end Ford was allowed to avoid that outcome with a customer advisory and a warning sticker. It could have been a lot worse for Ford. BMW's nightmare isn't likely to be as bad, but it could get worse before it gets better.

Related:

• Sudden Acceleration: Electronic Interference a Possible Cause
• BMW's High-Tech Luxury a Hard Sell