I too have been sitting on the sidelines waiting for the recurring issues to be properly addressed and rectified by MMC before parting with my hard earned money. I desperately want to be able to make a "safe" purchase as I cannot afford to tinker and fiddle with issues from across the pond in the early days/months/years of ownership.
I'm to the point now where I'm seriously considering buying a 1950's era auto as, from the looks of it, it will likely be MORE reliable and cheaper to maintain stateside than a new M3W.
On a related note, and with no disrespect (false caveat, I know), how on earth can it take a "competent mechanic" approx. 24 hours to fix ANYTHING on this vehicle? MMC themselves probably didn't spend 24 labor hours building the damn thing to begin with. Aren't we effectively talking about a glorified motorcycle here with an exposed engine no less, something that a shady tree mechanic should be able to reasonably expect to tear down and rebuild on their own. Certainly it has to be more straightforward than most makes of cars/motorcycles. Are we talking about real labor or book labor? I know many mechanics that can charge 20+ hours of "book labor" in a days work. Is that the real issue here? Even 8 or 12 hours of a qualified professional's real labor to simply remove and replace any one part on a car as seemingly simple as a M3W would appear to be extremely generous. Am I alone in this line of thinking? Otherwise, I'd say while we're laying it on, we add in a request for a design change/fix for whatever's causing the difficulty in replacing the compensator or ANY component on this vehicle to the growing list of items that should be addressed while we are raising our concerns.
Matt E46 ZHP
"I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted paychecks."
