Adafruit: From Ultimate Driving Machine to Ultimate Rent-Seeking Machine: The BMW Logo Screw Patent.
If you haven’t already heard, BMW’s R&D teams have been busy “innovating.” Unfortunately, they aren’t focusing on the things that actually matter—like stellar engine performance or the legendary driving dynamics that gearheads love. Instead, the C-suite execs decided that the best use of their engineering budget was to design a proprietary security screw specifically intended to prevent BMW drivers from fixing their own cars.
Yeah, security screws are security theatre. I had an electronics screw driver set that came with a bunch of the rarer screw bits by default. Actually ran into one I didn’t have, then noticed another set with that one (plus other features like the long bendy bit for hard to reach screws) next time I was in the tool section and just bought it.
That said, I won’t be needing this one. Driving a BMW would go against the image I’m trying to cultivate of not being an asshole.