Unclassified problem on the 2002 BMW 325I
4 crashes 2 fires 5 injuries 11 of the 23 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
Only 5 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When unclassified problem gets reported
There are 23 reports of unclassified problem on the 2002 BMW 325I, 5 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
It is the 34th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 58,000 miles | — | — |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 4 a crash, 2 a fire and 5 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 6 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2002, at a median of 60,000 miles, and latest on the 2004 at 150,000 miles.
By volume the 2006 carries the most reports, with 178; the 2002 has 23. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
Dt: while driving on a street the consumer noticed a small pothole and the consumer could not remember if she struck the pothole or not. Instantly, the front passenger's air bag as well as the side/curtain passenger's airbag partially deployed. The consumer was on her way to the dealer when this occurred to trade in on a new vehicle and decided to journey to the dealership with the airbags partially deployed. The consumer inspected the vehicle, no visible damage or impact was noticed. The dealer has made no corrections. The dealer was awaiting an inspection from a bmw representative. This was the first and only incident with the airbags deploying. *ak
Dt: while driving on a street the consumer noticed a small pothole and the consumer could not remember if she struck the pothole or not. Instantly, the front passenger's air bag as well as the side/curtain passenger's airbag partially deployed. The consumer was on her way to the dealer when this occurred to trade in on a new vehicle and decided to journey to the dealership with the airbags partially deployed. The consumer inspected the vehicle, no visible damage or impact was noticed. The dealer has made no corrections. The dealer was awaiting an inspection from a bmw representative. This was the first and only incident with the airbags deploying. *ak
On wednesday, seotember 26 2018 - my car had been parked outside since friday, sept 21. It had rained a great deal that weekend. At 1:00 in the afternoon, I went to get in the car and the windows were black from the inside. I had been smelling a strange electircal bruning smell all day. I did not open the door. I called the fire department.they arrived and investigated. The inside of the car on the drivers side dash was completely melted and the dash was still on fire inside. The pillar airbag had exploded and melted and had spewed plastic on the front seats. The upper driver side corner area of the windsheild was broken from the inside as though something had cataplulted into it from below. The pillar bag inflator was found on the floor of the car and was burnt in the bottom. The driver door panel had deployed. The car was a total loss
Also reported on the 2002 BMW 325I
Tail light, brake light or signal failure
Airbag inflator rupture
Other lighting problem
Other electrical problem
Window regulator or power window failure
Other body or interior problem
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 23 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 23 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does unclassified problem happen on the 2002 BMW 325I?
Across 5 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 60,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is unclassified problem on the 2002 BMW 325I?
23 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 1.2 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed