I just couldn’t resist the obvious clickbait title. As you know, about two weeks ago, I got my car back into good shape and extinguished a few warning lights that had been illuminated all summer. This week, I decided to finally get to the bottom of a problem that had vexed me since I first got the car two years ago.
Here’s the build sheet for my car:
This lists the equipment the car rolled out of the factory with. I retrofitted the satellite radio shortly after getting the car, which doesn’t show up here. Of interest to me is the line labeled S322, comfort access. With this option (which I think was actually standard equipment for 2008+ cars), you leave the car key in your pocket and unlock it by grabbing the door handle. To lock, you touch the area near the keyhole. To start the car, you just depress the clutch and hit the start button like every modern car. This was pretty high tech for 2008, let alone 2004 when the car launched with comfort access as an option. The comfort access never worked on my car for some reason, so like a Neanderthal, I had to press the buttons on the remote to lock and unlock, and slide the remote into its slot to start the car. My friend with more BMW experience than me had me convinced that my car didn’t actually have comfort access.
On a whim, I decided to explore the issue in more detail earlier this week. I was able to determine that my car definitely has comfort access thanks to a forum post that shows the differences between cars with and without the system. The only real external difference is the key. On cars with comfort access, the key has an extra door on the back for a battery. My key has that, and in the past I’ve actually changed the battery. Now that I knew I had comfort access, I had to get it working.
Other forum posts described a series of voodoo button presses that didn’t work for me. One poster mentioned that while the E60 5 series can have up to 10 keys programmed to it, only two of them can be used for comfort access. I only have one key, but that didn’t mean more weren’t programmed to the car. I fired up my laptop with ISTA on it and read out the key information. It reported that 10 keys were programmed to the car. I deactivated every key except mine, and that did the trick.
I now have comfort access working on my car after somehow getting by without it for two years. It honestly feels like my car is 10 years newer. I’ve been looking for excuses to drive it around so I can feel more modern.