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.
Until you’re halfway through putting in new brake pads and realize you need a specialty bit and now you’re stuck without a working car until you get that Amazon package.
At that point that bolt is getting destructively removed and replaced with a different bolt from the hardware store. Unless they have custom thread pitches, there’s going to be an easy replacement.