Its still my feeling that BMW would have stayed with the 088/9 lead faced bearings to the end of production if they could have...if for nothing else they knew where they were with them in terms of engine life.
The given start date of 2010 for the production of the new 702/3 while the old 088/9 bearings remained in production until March/October 2011, doesn't make things any clearer - its possible that the bearing versions were made by different companies (there is a picture showing boxes with different countries of origin for the two bearing part numbers (Italy and Germany)). They could even have been using the two types in parallel from 2010 onwards to see if the new version was going to be problematic.
I do agree that it is likely that a couple of the bearing failed cars that are counted as 2011 MY cars were probably built in 2010 with 088/9 bearings. Easiest would be to take cars with a factory build date of 2010 as having the old bearings and 2011 builds as having the new.
Lastly when do USA owners owners consider the start date for a MY for Euro produced cars?
Back in the day when I worked for VW/Audi the factory holidays were in August when the assembly lines were retooled for the following model year and production restarted in September.
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