New cars are pretty annoying to work on for a lot of reasons. There isn’t much space to get your hands into places you might need to reach, and there’s always a mess of wires and hoses to get through to fix the thing you need to fix. Plus, with today’s tech, there are more onboard systems you have to worry about than ever.
Some brands make things even more difficult by incorporating fasteners with unusual screw heads. Whenever I work on a Volkswagen Group product and come across a triple-square screw in place of a normal hex bolt for no discernible reason, I want to chuck my wrench across the room.
BMW, in my experience, isn’t nearly as bad when it comes to stuff like that. All of its bolts use pretty straightforward head designs. But if this patent is any indication of future products, it might soon become a lot more annoying to work on the company’s cars.
I Feel Like This Is a Gag Made Real
A patent published to Europe’s IP office last week and first discovered by CarBuzz shows a new type of screw head design from BMW that feels comically self-centered. It incorporates the automaker’s famous “roundel” right into the screw head, with the same four quadrants that, on the logo, are colored in white and blue. Hilariously, designers went as far as to emboss the letters “BMW” on the outer edge of the head to drive the point home.
BMW easily could’ve made its logo into a Phillips-head screw head, given its natural circular quadrant shape. Instead, it decided to invent an entirely new type of fastener. In this case, two of the four quadrants in the logo are recessed to accept a fastener tool. It’s similar to a 2-hole (above) or spanner-type screw head, in that you have to insert two prongs into some holes to get a grip on the screw. In this case, though, the prongs have to be in the shape of BMW roundel quadrants.
The patent provides drawings for two types of recesses: One where the recess is squared off at the bottom, like a slice of cheesecake, and another with a sloping shape, like a slice of a baked Alaska. There’s also a third design, which raises two of the quadrants while keeping the other two flush with the screw head base.
The idea is admittedly pretty clever, and CarBuzz argues this could be a way to further deter people from working on their own cars, which automakers are known to do. But this also feels like something a few engineers came up with at a bar one night and decided to follow through on the next day.
Please Stay A Joke
As fascinating as it would be to see a bunch of BMW fasteners holding my car together, I really hope this patent doesn’t go any further than concept drawings. To CarBuzz’s point, dealing with the errant Torx bolt while working on a car is annoying enough, but coming across one of these would be extra-lame.
Imagine getting halfway through a job, discovering a BMW fastener, and realizing you have to go to a hardware store just to buy a specialized fastener tool to remove it? I’ve been in that situation before, and it really sucks. The more standardized bolts a car has, the better.
There are certain situations where more niche screw heads are useful, sure, but the world doesn’t need another design like this. It’ll just mean more barely-useful tools I have to pay for that’ll mostly just take up space in my toolbox.
If anything, I think this would be a fun fastener to use in a build-it-yourself toy car or replica, just for the quirkiness of it all. So long as the fastener tool is included with the kit, of course.
Top graphic images: BMW
It would be a pretty bold move to put your company’s logo and name directly on the obnoxious anti-access bolt. “Hey, surprise! Associate this moment of fury with our brand forever, please.”
If this is real, and BMW does actually start using a fastener like this on its cars, they may, respectfully, go F themselves.
I say this despite the fact that Harbor Freight, along with innumerable random Chinese companies, will surely market compatible drivers and bits for pennies on the dollar of whatever BMW will charge.
It’s been literal years since BMW made something that I wanted to own… the i3, or a manual 2 series from a generation or two back.
Weird. My BMW motorcycle ONLY has Torx bolts of various sizes. Not even any (so-called) Torx Security bolts.
So I have one set of tools and I can pretty much take all the basic stuff off – seat, tank, fairings, windshield, nose-cone, electrics… I even replaced the entire clutch and only needed one non-Torx tool…
I guess I just assumed they used a standard both across and within Bimmers and Beemers…
Looks a bit like a one way screw head, And I suspect a lot of them will end up functioning that way too.
There is an existing screw head that’s bow tie shaped, almost like the BMW design. Fortunately I’ve never seen one in the wild, but I don’t have a screwdriver for it. The grouping about 12 point reminds me I should check my inventory since my Harbor Freight suitcase of bits is only hex and Torx, albeit 80 some pieces.
I wonder if this will be reserved for the highest end of 7-series variants or whatever, similar to how the new Cadillac Celestique has “Standard of the World” embossed on all of the exposed fastener heads.
I was thinking something similar. It would be pretty cool if these were used in the cabin to be both decorative but also functional visible fasteners, which i would hope is their only intended purpose.
BMW patents a novel way to screw it’s customers.
Appropriate replacement headline.
Twisted logic…
Selling them BMWs wasn’t bad enough? 🙂
This is like the time I went to pull apart a Macbook to find that Apple had decided to use a torx-like screw, but wanted it to be special for them so made it had five instead of six points. So, then I had to order a screwdriver online, wait for it to arrive and then immediately strip some out because the design of the screw head was so pathetic there is little material for you to drive against.
Well these will be harder to strip at least.
The pentalobe screw. Those things are little bastards.
My 2021 BMW is full of single use bolts and I HATE it. It feels so wasteful to do any work on the car. Even my wife that doesn’t want me to horde cars is like you need another car you can wrench on. I’m trying to convince her SHE needs a car I can wrench on 🙂
Just remember to spay or neuter your cars.
“Just give us exposed head fasteners back, everything doesn’t have to be covered up all the time, it makes everything harder to work on!” – People
“Oh I have a great idea!” – BMW
“Oh for f…sake” – People
I’m a homebrewer. That means I collect almost as much junk as a wrencher. Going through my pile recently I found one of my old failed CO2 regulators that still had good gauges on it and a good regulator with broken gauges I somehow inherited.
Self, I said, this should take ten minutes to disassemble and rebuild into one good working unit. Off with one gauge, easy. Off with the next gauge. WTF? Is this reverse threaded? Why the hell would it be reverse threaded? It’s not like this would have any rotational or vibrational forces to counteract. It’s just a fucking gauge.
Go do a little research. Yep CO2 and many welding gauges have one random reverse threaded component. Somewhere in medieval Europe in the first welder’s guild lodge, some drunk guys (almost always guys) sat around and said, you know our skill set isn’t that special, we will have to come up with some random ways to thwart just any DIY person from taking our jobs. Ideas? Anybody?
Of course, since I tried real hard to remove it like a logical person now the soft brass has embedded the gauge and it’s a GIANT PIA to remove.
The idea behind that is to prevent accidentally installing the wrong regulator on a bottle of something hazardous, acetylene for example. It’s a safety feature.
I can see some sense in that during assembly, but the same could be achieved with different diameter fittings. Finding out during attempted disassembly is just a cruel joke.
To clarify, I was not referring to attaching the regulator to the bottle. I was referring to the attachment of the gauges to the regulator manifold. None of that actually makes sense in context of what you are saying unless a volume or pressure gauge needs to be differently calibrated for a different gas. I don’t think they are, but my welding stops at arc, so what do I really know?
They are.
Came here to find this correct answer… Good job Haywood
The funny thing about humans is even when we don’t know what we don’t know we will act as if we do. It’s a good survival strategy for making split second decisions but it can lead to making up stories instead of wondering if there’s more information.
Not ugly enough for modern BMW to put into production.
Its not the specialty screw head that’s going to get you, its removing the fender, radiator, sway bar, and front subframe to get to the darn thing that is going to make you pull your hair out!
International Harvester solved this 60+ years ago.
Any 6 point bolt head had the IH logo cast in the bolt head.
I probably still have some rolling around in a coffee can somewhere.
A huge amount of design and engineering goes into making a new type of screw. It’s not like someone says “let’s do a triangle one!”
All to say, I find it highly unlikely that the rondel happens to also be even a half decent template for a new screw head.