2005 BMW 330I — Complaint #871530
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about EXTERIOR LIGHTING:HEADLIGHTS:CONCEALMENT DEVICES filed August 3, 2011
NHTSA complaint #871530 (ODI reference 10416910) concerns a 2005 BMW 330I and was filed on August 3, 2011. The owner reports the failure occurred on October 10, 2010. The vehicle had 51,800 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Washington based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as exterior lighting:headlights:concealment devices, 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 330I cohort independently describe similar exterior lighting:headlights:concealment devices 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 2005 BMW 330I shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
ZKW BRAND XENON HEADLIGHTS - THE BACK OF THE PROJECTOR BOWL IS MADE OF PLASTIC (VS. METAL IN THE AL/BOSCH BRAND, ALSO USED BY BMW), WHICH OVER TIME BURNS FROM THE HEAT PUT OUT BY THE HEADLIGHTS. THE BURN TURNS THE PLASTIC FROM WHITE TO BROWN/ORANGE, WHICH SEVERELY REDUCES LIGHT OUTPUT, MAKING NIGHT DRIVING DANGEROUS. I DON'T FEEL COMFORTABLE DRIVING AT NIGHT UNLESS MY HI-BEAMS ARE ON, WHICH IS HARD TO PULL OFF UNLESS I'M THE ONLY CAR ON THE ROAD. THIS ISSUE IS MOST PREVALENT IN 2002-2005 3 SERIES SEDANS, AND THE ISSUE IS WELL DOCUMENTED IN THE BMW COMMUNITY. *KB
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 871530 |
| ODI Number | 10416910 |
| Date Filed | August 3, 2011 |
| Failure Date | October 10, 2010 |
| VIN | WBAEV53455K |
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.