Do all E46 M3 engines blow up?
No, they don’t. There was apparently a bad production run centering on cars built during the period of 10/01 – 12/01 (all of these cars were sold as Model Year 2002 vehicles). BMW apparently changed some parts vendors and tolerances during this period and the result has been a failure rate in these particular cars of over 10%. Failure rates outside of this range (both before and after) is no higher than any other comparable car. BMW has ordered a service action to correct the problems in these cars by replacing rod bearing shells and oil pumps.
