2019 BMW 5 Series Reliability Report

A passenger restraint malfunction warning comes on, meaning the passenger air bag may not deploy. Dealers have replaced the knee air bag wiring harness and then the air bag control unit, sometimes on cars with under 20,000 miles. Owners say warranty coverage was refused and the repair cost thousands. Some fixes do not clear the fault. Separate crash reports describe air bags that did not deploy, only side air bags deploying in a rear-end and frontal impact, and one driver air bag deployment that caused a concussion.

Coolant leaks lead to low-coolant warnings, and the cause is often a cracked plastic oil filter housing or a water pump and heat management assembly leaking at the seals. Warnings can progress from low coolant to low oil. Owners worry that leaking oil could reach hot parts, and that overheating could ruin the engine. One car caught fire under the hood while driving at about 15 mph with only 4,500 miles. The cause was not determined. Excessive oil consumption also appears.

Headlights fill with heavy condensation after rain or in cold, damp weather, and it can take days to clear. In one case, moisture bent the beam enough to hurt visibility, and one report puts the onset at 3,000 miles. Replacement headlights can fail again within months, and owners quote thousands of dollars per side. Daytime running light modules overheat and melt the light tube. The tube is sold only as part of the full assembly, so the failure can mean a costly replacement and a failed state inspection.

Brakes fail to stop the car as expected, sometimes with an abnormal sound and an "Electronic Stability Control System Malfunctioning" message. Two of these reports end in collisions. Automatic emergency braking also misbehaves in both directions. It fails to brake for cars ahead at low speed, and elsewhere it activates suddenly with a screeching alarm when nothing is there. One intermittent case appears around 31,000 miles. Dealers have not found a cause or completed a repair in these reports.

At highway speeds around 60 mph, the car slows sharply on its own, and the driver cannot accelerate. This leaves drivers coasting in fast traffic with no warning light. One car needed a tow, and dealer tests found nothing. A separate report describes the screen going dark at startup and the car then accelerating without the pedal pressed, more than once. Service centers have not explained or fixed these events.

The collision avoidance system brakes hard with nothing ahead, on surface streets and at 50 mph on clear, dry roads. Owners say a following car could not have avoided hitting them. The dealer could not find a fault even on a car still under warranty, so the false braking goes unrepaired.

Original Pirelli Cinturato P7 all-season tires blow out on the inner sidewall with no impact damage and no tire-pressure warning, sometimes while the car is parked. Several tires on the same car fail within the first year, at roughly 13,000 to 15,000 miles. Owners believe the tires are defective and point to a recall on a different Pirelli tire size.