Quote:
Originally Posted by F32Fleet
This is a horrible move by BMW as it will cost them millions of dollars in lost sales.
BMW sales strategy is built around selling a vehicle twice (Lease first, CPO second). A lot of CPO and third owners are also into DIY for repairs/maintenance. Having to rely on a shop or forbid an expensive dealer with their ridiculously high BMW mandated overhead will drive these owners away from the brand. Consequently used car values will suffer which will reduce residuals on leases making the car more expensive for the initial buyer.
BMW also makes a ton of money on parts. Indy shops and Euro-parts houses (FCP Euro, ECS Tuning, etc) will buy less parts from BMW as well.
Another thing is that even if an owner wasn't into DIY, resources like newTIS allow for confirmation of parts required for a job. For example with regards to spark plugs typically single-use TTY bolts must be removed and replaced.. Without sites like newTIS an owner might not be aware of that requirement.
What's next? Automakers banning OBD2 readers?
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I 100% agree. I deal with IP law a lot, so when I learned of NewTIS.com (from this forum) I was really surprised it even existed. I really thought BMW was behind it considering all the IP (intellectual property) that was on the site, just to promote DIY'ing of old Bimmers. I think the same of RealOEM.com too. I bet it's the next to go.
Back in the day, my fellow Bimmerheads and I had a friend at the Annapolis, MD BMW dealership in the parts department who would burn a copy of the BMW parts TIS for us. This was back in the late 1990's. What a godsend that was. And we were close to Tischer (getBMWparts.com), before it was getBMWparts, so we'd get our parts from them. Their parts guys, Jeff and Mike would give us 20% parts discount without being BMWCCA members. Tischer BMW (now BMW of Silver Spring) is the DC area BMW parts distributor, so their stock was very extensive as it is now. But I moved away from Maryland back in 2003 and lost those resources, so when RealOEM and getBMWsparts came on line it was great to have those resources again.
Regarding OBDII; it's Federally-mandated emission control architecture. That's the whole purpose behind the OBDII, to prevent manufacturer's from claiming proprietary rights to emissions-related computer trouble codes. By statute, they can't take away OBDII and the open-source scan tools.
But will BMW try to shut down proliferation of open-source BMW scan tool software? What is troubling is BMW was known as its own promoter of its Brand and fully supports (supported) down-tier ownership of it's old and legacy models. 20 years ago BMW had opened a specialty service just for owners restoring old Bimmers, where your could order the original documentation for your car and they would source or even make out-of-production parts. Not sure they still support that. Times have changed I guess...
I literally just ordered the Bentley repair manual for my E46 I acquired last year because of this turn of events. For the E86 I'm SOL. But the E86 is enough E90 and E46, I hopefully should be okay.