I knew this was an area to inspect, but now that I'm seriously shopping around..how pervasive is this issue? Internet lore is pretty damn bad. I could fix it myself, but I don't want to have to right away. What a royal pain. Any firsthand experiences?
Mine has no signs of rust, if that is what you are talking about?
The chassis tears at the rear subframe mounting locations. You have to pull the rear suspension, subframe, diff, tank to get at it to weld in patches or reinforce it.
I've never seen it happen yet. Maybe my customers are all weenies.
NTTAWWT. Weenies need cars too 
It's more prevalent on the '99-00 cars, later ones had additional bracing but it can still happen. The internet does blow things out of proportion, actual failure rate is said to be somewhere around 5%, but it is a very real issue nonetheless. Wagons and AWD models seem to be pretty much unaffected though, which is weird.
Nah, it makes sense. Wagon drivers tend to be weenies and AWD vehicles don't have the same loading on the rear suspension. Most of my E46 customers have AWD. One has an AWD wagon, and he always has metal playing on the CD player when he drops it off, which is nice.
From looking at pictures of what the failure point is, it looks like damage from chronic wheelhop.
I heard its mainly an issue with the 330i but im sure someone who hoons a 323i could tear one up too
i've repaired two of them at a bmw garage that worked on a lot of e46 cars. one was supercharged and driven by a guy whose name i forgot so he was dubbed Sgt. Slaughter as he needed a transmission and diff replaced at the same time. the other was a woman who drove down a horrifically bad road to and from work and never steered around anything.
my own winter beater e36 failed last year as well. i drove it all winter anyway but it's really not driveable long term and i'm just not sure it's worth the effort to repair. it's a pretty big job and absolutely worth doing the moment you see any cracking in the unibody before it starts spreading. if you're looking they start around the drivers side rear mount.
Mine is AWD but it will be checked when on the lift next.
My 2004 M3 with 132000 miles has no signs of failure. So, it's not like every car does it. Still, I plan to install some reinforcements before too much longer. There are weld-in reinforcements, or you can do the fix BMW came up with, which is to inject structural foam into the area where the subframe mounts. Both cost a few hundred bucks to implement.
Just inject some foam eh? I'll have to look into that.
My dad's '01 325Ci coupe has 180k miles, several track days and spirited back road drives, is fine and shows no signs of tearing.
Had around 100k miles on our 04 when we sold it, no issues. I would check for the issue, but I also wouldn't worry about it.
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