It was the third incident, only two days later, that finally pushed Inverso over the edge - and it wasn't just that it was a high-speed failure on Highway 422 at rush hour, though that would have been plenty to make me blow a gasket.
Inverso was angry about what she regarded as BMW's stonewalling over a defect in a high-pressure fuel pump used on various BMW models with "twin turbo" engines.
The night after the second malfunction, Inverso says, she went on the Internet and found she wasn't alone. Dozens of postings on sites frequented by BMW aficionados, such as Bimmerfest, made it clear that some owners were growing wary of cars they otherwise loved - you don't pay $60,000, as Inverso did, for an ordinary auto.
Convinced that her "ultimate driving machine" needed a new fuel pump, she called her dealer to ask for one. Instead, a service tech said the problem "was most likely a computer-programming issue," she recalls.
After retrieving her car the next day, Inverso says, she drove about seven miles - just far enough to be on Highway 422 at rush hour when the car again lost power. "I almost got rear-ended by a truck," she says.
Finally, a recall
After that third failure, Inverso contacted Robert M. Silverman, a lawyer at the Ambler lemon-law firm of Kimmel & Silverman P.C. She's hoping BMW will soon buy back her car. For now, she sticks to the right-hand lane, avoids night driving, and nervously eyes her rearview mirror.
Inverso, Silverman, and other squeaky-wheel BMW owners and their attorneys, along with the news media, finally swayed BMW of North America to act. On Oct. 26, the day after an ABC-TV report on the fuel-pump problems, BMW announced an "emissions recall" of 130,000 vehicles equipped with the high-pressure pumps, though it said just 40,000 were likely to need a new pump.
