So my wife’s econobox was in the shop, and she’d needed to drive my X3M instead. Of note she hates my car - so she pretty much never drives it unless she’s taking a turn on the freeway or something. In other words, with me in the car - until today.

So she messages me today saying she’s confused about why my car is so slow and also why it’s so loud. I was a little busy at work so I don’t really figure out what she means but it turns out she was driving around in first gear unaware that she had it in manual mode.

She probably drove it 20 minutes or so in first gear at about 30 mph. Periodically redlining the poor thing. She burned through about 2 gallons of gas.

So my question is, what damage might be done? I know these engines are built to handle high revs, but you’re not really supposed to drive it bouncing between 6000 RPMs and red line for 10 minutes straight or longer.

Any way to check? Sidebar, is it actually possible to overrev the engine into blowing up? Or do the nanny features prevent you from doing that nowadays?