According to BMW and the owner's manual, both the automatic and manual transmissions have "lifetime" fluid fills. That only means that the life of your transmission is tied to how frequently you change it! If you never change the "lifetime" fluid it came with, you'll have a self-fulfilling prophecy and the fluid will certainly last the life of your transmission.
My car's previous owner changed the auto trans. fluid at 65k and again at 115k using BMW transmi$$ion fluid. That's part of the reason I felt comfortable enough to buy the car at 120k miles. It now has 124,000 and the transmission works beautifully. Most serious BMW techs tell you to change even the lifetime fills at 60,000 mile intervals.
-Phil |