2011 BMW 550I — Complaint #1321741
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about POWER TRAIN:DRIVELINE filed September 29, 2016
NHTSA complaint #1321741 (ODI reference 10910587) concerns a 2011 BMW 550I and was filed on September 29, 2016. The owner reports the failure occurred on June 13, 2016. The vehicle had 101,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to California based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as power train:driveline, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same BMW 550I cohort independently describe similar power train:driveline failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2011 BMW 550I shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
TL* THE CONTACT OWNS A 2011 BMW 550I. WHILE DRIVING 70 MPH, THE ACCELERATOR PEDAL WAS DEPRESSED AND THE DRIVE TRAIN WARNING INDICATOR ILLUMINATED. THE VEHICLE LOST MOMENTUM. ALSO, THE BRAKE PEDAL DID NOT STOP THE VEHICLE WHEN IT WAS DEPRESSED. THE CONTACT WAS ABLE TO SLOW DOWN THE VEHICLE BY DEPRESSING THE BRAKE PEDAL WITH BOTH FEET. THE DEALER STATED THAT THE VACUUM PUMP FAILED. THE VEHICLE WAS REPAIRED. THE MANUFACTURER WAS NOTIFIED OF THE FAILURE. THE APPROXIMATE FAILURE MILEAGE WAS 101,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1321741 |
| ODI Number | 10910587 |
| Date Filed | September 29, 2016 |
| Failure Date | June 13, 2016 |
| VIN | WBAFU9C57BC |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.