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Shocks. Who needs 'em, right? Actually, everyone. Everyone needs them. Struts and shocks help keep your car stable instead of just bouncing wildly over bumps or through corners.
This TikTok video, which at the time of this writing, has more than 660,000 views and has been shared around Facebook, shows exactly what it looks like when you have a catastrophic failure involving a shock on your BMW E46 3-Series wagon. It's bad. Very bad.
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In this short clip, it appears the shock is still attached at its bottom mounting point, but not on the top to the actual body of the car. The shock's rod is totally unsecured and unhooked from its home inside its mount. It's supposed to be locked into the car's body, right above the rear right wheel well. But, of course, it's not. The shock's rod is just vibing, moving up and down with the road like a third-row passenger, with some of its hardware attached.
This kind of failure is often caused by the deterioration of the body's structural metal, due to rust or other factors. Owners of Nineties and 2000s BMWs are no strangers to this sort of thing. From this video, it's unclear if the metal failed, or if the shock mount itself broke.
Though you can drive around like this, don't. Your car will be way harder to control and you'll probably end up breaking other things in the process.