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Howdy all!

I'm excited to say that my car has finally entered production! I placed the order through the US Military Sales Program (Superior Motors MSP) back in November. I've been deployed to Afghanistan since October, and the car will not only replace the 2000 Z3M Coupe I sold in April of last year, but it will also serve as a nice welcome home gift (oh, and to celebrate my 30th birthday I suppose). Myself and my new 2er should arrive on US soil within a week of each other. (#timing)

Working with Dianne at Superior Motors MSP has been great! Nothing like your usual car dealership. I told her I was interested in either an M3 or an M235i, then she sent me the pricing on each. I configured each how I wanted and ended up going with the M235i as the more affordable, practical option (it was over $10,000 less!). We discussed when I would return to the states and agreed on a late March production date, with delivery in the middle of May. They took a $1,000 deposit then, and the balance just this week when my VIN was released. I'm beyond excited! I have a few notes for Military buyers at the bottom.

My order spec:
2016 M235i - 6MT
Mineral Grey over Terra Leather
Fineline Stream Wood Trim
Technology Package
Enhanced USB
Harmon Kardon
Heated front seats
Moonroof delete

Below are some important dates for those tracking spring builds:
Order date: 11/26/2015
Proposed SOP: Week 12, 2016 (3rd week of March)
VIN Release: 3/16/2016
Production Date: 3/23/2016
Released to carrier in Germany: 3/25/2016
Arrival in Bremerhaven: 4/1/2016
Departure from Bremerhaven: 4/7/2016
Arrival in US Port: 4/23/2016
Released to carrier in US: 4/28/2016
Arrival at Voss Villiage BMW, Centerville OH: 5/9/2016
Pickup date: 5/13/2016


Tracking my new M235i by Colby Gregory, on Flickr

I will keep this thread updated along the way with my observations. If any of you have questions about the MSP process or any of my detective work along the way, feel free to ask!

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The following is an account of my own experience, your mileage may vary! I believe they (BMW) have discontinued the program for US service members deployed for short periods. I'm pretty sure they still offer it for those stationed in countries other than the US, but if you're reading this and you're stationed in the US but about to deploy, you may not be able to use this program.

The MSP works on a strange non-allocation based system. They work in the "gaps" in production and usually have a fair amount of lead time. To put it in perspective, when I ordered in late November 2015, the SOONEST I could get my production started was February. They were pushing me to have me start production then, but that wasn't agreeable to me for two reasons:

1) The car would beat me home by about a month, it would likely sit on my local dealer's lot, be allowed to be driven by others or farted in by gawkers in the showroom. No thanks!

2) Once your VIN is released, you must pay the balance of the car. If I was financing, this probably wouldn't have been a big deal. Since for the last 2 years I have been drooling over this car, I wanted to pay cash. I was using some money that I had made on my M coupe along with some cash I had been saving on my tour. I wouldn't have had enough saved up by February and would have been forced to sell securities (bad idea in this market) or finance (between my wife and I we have one car payment and want to keep it that way).

Keep the aforementioned in mind if you place an order. This meant I was carefully budgeting every month, pinching every penny I could. In the end, I'm happy I paid cash because it represents a concerted effort to save for something I've wanted for years. Is it the best long-term financial decision? Maybe not, but I'm young, I intend to keep the car a very long time and can use what I would have spent on a car payment to continue building equity in my house, investing, retirement, etc.

As soon as I sent over a deposit, they sent me the order confirmation printout from their dealer ordering system. This is where I found my order number, list of options, scheduled SOP, scheduled delivery date, etc. The order number will remain the same throughout the process, but keep in mind that because this ordering process is different than from US dealers, your order number will NOT be recognized by the myBMW system until about 24-48 hours after your VIN is released. I checked every few weeks to no avail, so save your effort. Dianne at MSP told me that as soon as I had a VIN, I would be able to use the last 7 digits to track the car in lieu of my order number.

My VIN was released almost exactly when I thought it would, and I promptly entered it into my BMW account. No luck! I was a little uneasy, as the final balance was due to them, and I had no way of checking to see if the car was in fact a real thing. This led me to do a couple of things that eased my mind.

1) I went onto my auto insurance website and used the full VIN to retrieve a quote for insurance. This worked! Now, it doesn't necessarily mean the serial number is valid (the last 7 digits) because the auto insurance might just use the first portion of the VIN to determine the make/model/year which is the important portion to the insurance company.

2) Knowing full-well that this was a hope and a prayer, I went to one of the BMW VIN lookup tools available online. Sure enough, my VIN was recognized, with all of the options I selected in tact, but with a production date of 01-01-0001. I believe this date corresponds to the production status code of 111. Here's where I made the assumption that VINs were assigned incrementally and tried my serial number minus 1. It worked! A different configuration of M235i, same production date. I then tried my serial number minus 20, bingo! I found yet another configuration of M235i, but it had a production date of last week! I then tried every VIN between then and now to find out where, as of the 16th, they were in production. Entering different values and looking for production dates, I found the factory was about 10 VINs away from mine. I also learned that in the last production week (week 11) they made it through 18 M235is. Obviously this will fluctuate depending on many factors, but it gave me confidence that my VIN would in fact be produced this week. This gave me yet-more confidence.

3) Armed with the knowledge that VINs are assigned incrementally, serial numbers for a certain model are basically the same for a particular model and that production was logged and updated in their database very frequently, I decided to try some different serial numbers in the MyBMW "add vehicle" page. Sure enough, the serial number BEFORE mine was found, but mine and every one after mine was not. I did this around breakfast yesterday and tried again after lunch. SUCCESS!

I am now re-checking the VIN lookup tool I mentioned before to keep a tab on which serial numbers are being produced every day. I am expecting my car to have a logged production date of March 19th, I'll keep you informed as to whether that's accurate or not once it's done!

I'm uncertain as to whether this production date corresponds to when production was finished, started, hit the 50% point, roundels added or what not, but it means the car is most definitely being assembled!

This may not apply to most of you, as you should be able to see your order number once your local dealer enters the order information into the system, but I wanted my experience (and lunacy) to be documented so folks can use my methods to inform themselves when they order.

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Hope this isn't an April Fools joke, but my car was assigned to the TONGALA today! Looks like it will be departing Bremerhaven on the 7th of April and is headed for New York, arriving on the 22nd.

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Well, on Friday the 13th I picked up my beautiful new 2er! A few notes for those doing military delivery.

-Make sure you check the documentation BMW NA sends you, mine had two critical clerical errors
-You will have you title and register the car on your own. I didn't know this until 2 days before pickup. Thankfully I had all the documentation I needed and the process was a snap. I arrived at the dealership with the title and tags in hand

And, on to the photos!

Love at first sight!


Absolutely love this interior color


Posing next to my other BMW, Helga


Sunroof Delete!


I am one happy camper