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.
That was my first thought as well. I love torx bolts. I worked on BMWs professionally for a few years and never in all that time did I ever strip a torx bolt. Not even 1.
Of course, the engine bolts themselves snapped frequently without even touching them due to galvanic reaction to the magnesium block, and the much weaker in general aluminum bolts, but that’s a different problem.