[BentZero]

I'm the kind of person that likes to take my time when deciding on which vehicle to purchase. It's not unusual for my search to span two years. This last purchase is the result of 3.5 years of researching, debating, spouse convincing and finally waiting until I felt like my twin boys were old enough to ride in a coupe. At first I wanted the F30 and came close to buying, but it didn't feel right. Then the F22 came along. Specifically the M235i. That's enough of that story. Let's get to the PCD experience!

I live in Charleston, SC. Making the drive up to Greenville is fairly easy for me and one that I make often during the football season. That made taking advantage of the PCD program a no-brainer. I ordered the vehicle with my local dealer since they gave me the best quote. The order was placed on 12/14/15. Apparently the winter vacation time in Germany delayed the production of my vehicle. That' fine, I didn't really want to take delivery in the middle of winter anyway. After a bunch of tracking and realizing how insane I am I finally received a delivery date of 3/15/16. I requested an earlier date about the time that the car made it to US waters and the BMW performance center was more than happy to accommodate me.

Before my trip I received an email from BMW with information about the hotel as well as information on how to extend my stay if needed. I was going to get Xpel paint protection film installed immediately after picking up my car, so this information was very welcomed. The BMW group rate made extending my stay at the Marriott the obvious choice. The other area hotels; that are 2.75 star venues at best; were just barely less expensive than the BMW group rate. If you're going to extend your stay be sure to select the top floor Concierge level rooms. More on that later. After you receive your confirmation number from the Marriott just send it to your BMW PCD contact and they will be sure that your complimentary room will rollover into your own Marriott reservation. This way you don't have to change rooms.

Since I was going to do this solo I hopped into a rental car and made my way towards Greenville. The Greenville airport is tiny and easy to navigate. After i dropped off my car I called the Marriott to request a shuttle. Within 10 mins my shuttle arrived which was a brand new BMW X5. It appeared to be fully loaded. During the shuttle ride my driver handed me a plain white envelope with my name on it containing a waiver to be signed and turned in when you arrive at the PC. He made sure that I remember four items for the upcoming activities. Shoes, driver's license, waiver and a camera. I'd add that you also need any temporary license plates that you've received from your dealer. Overall, the shuttle driver was beyond friendly. It was pretty insane.......and it kind of made me feel uncomfortable. I'm just a regular dude. I feel awkward when people are THAT accommodating. Still, dude was dope and even got me a bucket of ice when I made it to my room. I didn't have to lift a finger. DO NOT FORGET TO TIP. BMW's literature mentions that you cannot tip BMW employees. However, the shuttle driver is a hotel employee. Upon check-in I received four drink vouchers. Two for each day that I would be staying at the hotel. The vouchers were good for house wine, liquor and I think soda.

The vouchers came in handy during dinner. Forum member Hemisedan and I realized that we'd be taking delivery on the same day and decided to meet up for dinner. BMW guests are limited to a special menu. I'd say that the dinner was okay. Can't really expect too much from hotel food I guess. It was a three course meal though which was nice. I got the spinach salad, grouper with jasmine rice and banana bread pudding for dessert. The salad was pretty good. Fish was so-so. The portions were a bit small as well. The dessert was good, but super rich since it was drenched in syrup. During dinner I got a couple of bourbon and ginger ale drinks. I don't drink much, so i can't speak to the quality. It was Jim Beam. Means nothing to me lol.

My driver dude told me that I would need to check-in at the bell hop station at 7:30. I woke up early and made my way downstairs for breakfast around 6:30. As with dinner, BMW guests are limited to a special menu. In this case it's the breakfast okay. There was an omelette and waffle station manned by a chef. I got a bacon omelette, a small waffle, sausage and a couple of slices of bacon. No wonder no matter how much I hit the gym (and even did so at the hotel) I'll never have abs. Breakfast was pretty good when compared to your typical continental breakfast. I'd still rate it at IHOP levels at best.

Anyway, I didn't drive all this way for the food. Let's get to the part that we all care about.

After a short shuttle ride we arrived at the BMW performance center. The facility pretty nondescript. Aside from some flags and some BMWs parked out front you won't really notice the building much. You would, however, notice the off-road course. We were first taken to a class room to meet our instructors and discuss safety procedures for the day. I was happy to see that we were a tiny group. There were 6 people total. Myself (M235i), Hemi(M235i), a couple from Charleston (X5) and a couple from Atlanta (X5). After the brief orientation we were split into even smaller groups. The X5 peeps and M235i peeps. Add in the fact that Hemi and i didn't have a guest and we're looking at maximum seat time! Hemi and I were each given a red M235i. Although he and I are buying 6MT vehicles these were, understandably, automatics. I went for the one with the black interior with fineline trim since it matches my vehicle.

The first exercise of the day was the "road course". It's more of a road course/autoX type of thing and it was a blast. At first I took it kinda easy and left it in comfort mode. After a couple of laps I switched it over to sport. I've never driven a rwd car up to this point and man is it different. You can feel the power coming from the rear allowing you to power out of the corners. It was exhilarating. Since there were only two of us we basically could go all out on the track without worrying about having to slow down for other people. Our instructor also communicated to us over the radio giving us pointers on how to go even faster. I'm proud to say that Hemi and I finished our laps (which I think we had around 10) without knocking a single cone. This exercise really showed me what this car is capable of which is a lot more than I'll ever use on surface roads. Highway on-ramps are going to be a blast though.

Next up was the skid pad. The circular skid pad itself is polished concrete and because that's not enough there's a geyser of water about every 10' around the perimeter of the circle. This way they can make sure that traction is merely a dream once you gain some speed. We were instructed to park our cars off to the side and jump into the 340i with our instructor. That's a nice car for sure, but it only reaffirmed that I made the right choice. For me the car is bigger than I'd like and I felt like turn in with the 2er was better. Anyway, our instructor drove first. Okay, this is kind of a blur because it was kind of intense. When I say intense i don't mean that my heart was racing. There was just a lot going on with the instructor flipping traction settings left and right as well as the water shooting onto your windshield obstructing your view.

First up he went over under steer. What causes it. What to do when it happens. That was pretty cool. I don't remember if he then showed us what the car can do to prevent understeer. As I said, he was flipping switches like mad and throwing all kinds of acronyms and information at us. Next was heavy throttle induced over steer and what to do when that happens. I do remember him showing us how the car prevents over steer by killing throttle. After that was trailing throttle over steer. Basically over steer that occurs when you suddenly let off of the gas thus shifting weight and traction to the front tires (aka Porsche killers). After the information dump I jumped into the front seat, instructor in the passenger seat and poor Hemi in the rear. I'll admit it. I was intimidated at first. As i said before, i've never driven a rwd car and the only times I'd ever encountered over steer was in fwd vehicles with bald rear tires. First up was the under steer exercise. It was hard to stay on the yellow line that marks the inside line you're supposed to follow. As the speed builds you have to turn tighter and tighter which means more and more water on your windshield. After enough speed is gained you begin to hear the chatter of under steer. This I've experienced before. Getting out of it is easy enough......assuming you have the room to do so.

Next up was throttle induced over steer. The instructor turned traction control off and I got the car to over steer. He wanted me to get the car to spin which i did a couple of times. That was fun for me.....maybe not so much for Hemi lol. Then he wanted me to start correcting it. However, i did not input anywhere near enough opposite lock on the first attempt. I felt like i did, but I hadn't. Tried it again and i did a lot better. Still kinda bad though. I eventually got better, but i still feel like I'd need more practice to feel good about my abilities here. One thing i noticed is that the steering wheel tells you NOTHING. Zero. Zilch. Nada. You had to detect the over steer through the chassis. After that was trailing throttle over steer which is a lot less pronounced in this car than throttle induced over steer. All in all, I had a lot of fun and I want to do that exercise again. Mainly because I want to do things right and I feel like I need more over steer correction practice.

Following the skid pad was the emergency braking exercise. If you’ve ever had to slam on the brakes and have ABS kick in you pretty much know what you’re getting here. It was still fun though. You have to get up 45mph, 50mph and ultimately 60mph in a relatively short distance and then slam on the brakes. The braking portion of the course veers to the left a bit and the instructor will have you braking and turning to illustrate how the ABS allows you to brake and steer at the same time.

That marked the end of the driving portion of the PCD experience. At this point my brain is still trying to comprehend all of the things that I got to do in someone else’s vehicle and just how much fun it was. Then our instructor tells us that we’re gonna “go for a ride” and gestures over towards a couple of baby blue M3’s! Hemi let me sit in front as our instructor slowly meandered through the parking lot. Hemisedan then says “This is the calmest you’ve driven all day.” which our instructor took as a sign to move like a bat out of hell lol. The ride was insane and if there was a corner we were gonna drift around it. Did 3 laps around the skid pad completely sideways as well. It was a blast.

I split off from Hemisedan at this point as he went to take delivery of his Grey Ghost. I went on to the factory tour. I was a bit jealous at first, but I realized that I wouldn’t want to meet my Zero and then have to leave it to take the tour. At this point they had us jumping into a BMW X5 to drive over to the production factory. The factory tour was pretty cool. You basically get to see the entire BMW SUV building process from start to finish. The only thing we didn’t see is the painting of the sheet metal. The logistics involved in building each vehicle to customer specs in sequence is pretty amazing. You’re not allowed to bring cameras or even cell phones into the factory which kinda sucked so all you’re left with are memories when you’re done. Bring comfortable shoes though since you’re doing the tour on your feet.
After the tour we drove back to the PC to do the off-road part of the day. This was pretty cool. You go over some pretty steep inclines and down some steep declines. The hill decent feature is cool. It was also cool to turn on the front facing camera while going through the water and during the “frame bender” exercises. Generally I find SUV’s too big though (even though I drove one for a couple of years) and found this part to be cool but it wasn’t the most fun part of the day.

At some point we would have toured the museum, but it was still being renovated. I’ll swing by some time whenever I head to Clemson for a football game.

After the off-road portion was lunch with was very good and totally free. Although it was hard for me to concentrate on lunch because I knew that very soon I’d be meeting Zero.
I won’t go over the delivery process of the vehicle. Honestly, it was mostly a blur because I was admiring my car more than I was listening to the specialist. After delivery I hit the road for a first drive in my first BMW.

As I mentioned earlier, I selected the Concierge level room after finding out from the hotel that it includes a continental breakfast and even light dinner. Snacks, soda and water is also available 24 hours a day. I believe it cost me like $15 extra. This turned out to be a good decision as I was stuck at the hotel as I waited for the shop to install the Xpel. The breakfast selection was small though. Like one hot plate small. Oh well, i didn't have to spend the $16 plus tip for the breakfast buffet available downstairs. I also sat in the lounge after my checkout time which was nice and quiet and better yet out of the way. I didn’t feel like I was overstaying my welcome one bit.

Overall, the PCD experience is one that you should defintely go out of your way to experience at least once in your life. Living in South Carolina I can confidently say that I will take advantage of the performance center delivery on all of my future BMW vehicles. BMW accomplished their goal. The PCD program has earned my brand loyalty. The car solidifies it.

[ibeam81]

Thanks for the detailed write-up on your PCD. It sounds great. I'm picking up my M235i at the Performance Center on April 25. I'm really looking forward to it.

[BentZero]

Man, that's awesome. You're gonna have a blast.