To that point, my Toyota comes with "lifetime" red long life coolant. And the manual says change it every 5 years or 100K miles.
Mike Miller has touched on this subject.. He is perplexed at BMW's new recommendation of the coolant now being lifetime fill. It's the very same coolant that heretofore required changing every 2 years - then all of a sudden it's a lifetime fill coolant but it's chemical composition hasn't changed one bit. He blames BMW's using the mantra of "low to no maintenance" to help sell it's cars and possibly erase the preconcieved notion that BMW's are high ($$$$) maintenance cars. For the lenghth of most lease periods BMW will probably get away with the lifetime fills on it cars but BMW may wind up with the unwanted reputation of having cars that fall completely apart after they are 5 years old. Only time will tell...
Actually BMW calls it long life fluid not lifetime fluid, an 03 E46 should have the coolant flushed every 4 years -- for an 04 E46 the coolant is considered a long life fluid and does not need to be changed -- according to the owners manual! My personal opinion is to change it out every 4 years if you live in a perfect world unless of course you track the car and you should be changing it between races. Living in the DC / Baltimore region and sitting in stop and go traffic every day i would recommend changing it every 2 years along with your brake fluid flush. it is cheap insurance.
