general problems of the 2013 BMW X3

Car was parked and when I came out of walmart it was on fire coming from the steering box. I tried to put it out with my jacket but yellow fire was too much. Fire department came on scene as well as police. By stander had large thermos of coffee and extinguished the fire before fire truck arrived.

While driving steering stopped working and became hard to steering , error -drive moderately , increased steering effort required on display , which was extremely difficult at slow speeds , definitely a safety issue.

Upon start up there is no power assist for 5-20 seconds. This started to occur at approx 60 thousand miles. Diagnosed as failing eps steering rack.

While driving on the highway at 60-70 miles, the low oil pressure light came on, immediately followed by a drivetrain malfunction indicator light then car completely lost all power including breaks and steering. Luckily was able to pull over to a service lane. The car would not restart and had tow to the dealer. Dealer performed an oil analysis and found lots of metal shavings/particles in the oil which caused the engine to seize. Meanwhile the oil was just changed 3 weeks prior. Clearly this is manufacture defect. BMW north America does not want to acknowledge this even though there are numerous class actions suits regarding timing chain failure which causes the engine to seize due to failure of plastic timing chain guides. Had to pay out of pocket to repair defective engine. There needs to be a recall as this could have been catastrophic if someone was seriously hurt or even killed. BMW does not value the safety of their consumers nor do they stand by their products. This is totally unacceptable. In good conscience, I would never recommend this "ultimate driving machine" to anyone!.

Cpsc: i1410202a. 2012 BMW X3. Consumer stated the heated steering wheel heats up to 105 degrees which is unsafe and has to be turned off manually. The dealer informed the consumer, there was nothing wrong with heated steering wheel.