[ILC32]

It was not a good weekend for BMWs at our house. We replaced my wife's E60 5 series with an X5 recently. The new X5, which she loves, has about 400 miles on it. On Saturday, the tranny stopped responding while we were trying to back into our garage. The car is in park, and will not go into any gear, or even neutral. The idrive indicated a "shifter malfunction." We called BMW assist, but the tow guy could not get the car onto his flatbed because the car is locked in park, and it is currently stuck oriented perpendicular to the direction out of of our L-shaped driveway, blocking entrance to the garage area, with a fence amount 3 feet from the front bumper. Apparently BMWs used to have a release on the transmission tunnel, which could be accessed from the inside of the car to get it out of park. We were told newer models like ours do not have the release. So no tow. The dealer is still tying to figure out how to get the truck out of our driveway. If anyone knows how to get the car out of park, please tell me!

It gets even better, though. . .

The dealer gave us a new X3 2.8 to use until the X5 is finally removed somehow from our driveway and fixed. We drove the X3 home and parked it. Fast forward to Sunday, when we decide to go for coffee. We try to start the X3, which also happens to have about 400 miles on it, and get an "ignition malfunction." It will not start or even turn over, although all the electrics work and the car apparently "thinks" its running (the idrive says something like "car may not re-start if turned off"). So now we have two basically new BMW SAVs at our house, both of which are totally immobile. What a weekend. The E60 never had an issue, neither did my E46 M3.