Giannis
Staff member
Owners from all around the world are reporting rust issues in their F20 1 and F30 3 series, in various BMW related forums. These issues are with the seat frame metal parts and the metal supports of the A/C system, behind the dashboard. The rust appears to be even bigger in the hinge that connects the two parts of the front seats in both model series. Rust reports come from owners of cars that are produced in all factories, from Germany, China and South Africa, which makes the problem not factory specific.
Our always greatly informed member, EnI, wrote in the forums that the seats are produced by BMW themselves in BMW's Wackersdorf factory. The same seats are also outsourced to Lear (one of the biggest seat manufacturers worldwide), built to BMW's specifications in Lear Werk Wackersdorf. The seat frames of the bigger models are not prone to rust, as they are outsourced to a french company named Faurecia.
So far, BMW, who claim that the rust is only superficial, has not issued an official press release about this issue, yet owners that brought their cars to have the rust issues fixed, had their seat frames grinded and then painted with black spray paint. In any case, this appears to be a serious issue, as the seat frames were also not painted in the E46 and E90 3 series, yet there were no reports of rust in those parts.
If you are an F20 or F30 owner, please drop by our forum discussion and share your seats' condition with us, or simply join our discussion about this topic here: Forum discussion
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