[calbears]

This is going to be a long thread where my friend and I both took delivery of our Signal Green M3 CSs at the Performance Center in Spartanburg and drove them back home across the country.

It all started back in January of this year, about a week before the official unveiling of the M3 CS at the Rolex 24. Dealers got a cryptic email about ordering a M3 Special Model with paint choices, wheel choice, caliper choice (color and CCBs or not). Each dealer would get only one. Since I handle the orders for the dealership, I knew (looking at the colors) that this was the CS. So I built it for me. I immediately texted my friend and let him know that he should reach out to his dealer and claim the CS and spec it.

I happed to be at Daytona and met Frank van Meel before the unveiling of the M3 CS. And then the next day go to see Signal Green in person. i knew I made the right choice of the 4 colors.

Fast forward to the Long Beach Grand Prix and I approached Tom Plucinsky of BMW NA (and a friend) with an idea about multiple CS deliveries--the original idea was 3 at once! Tom put me in the loop with Josh Barron (BMW NA M boss) and he was supportive of the plan. At this time, the 2 cars didn't have a production week, but he made sure the dealerships (and area managers) and the performance center were aware of the request. We still had to wait until the cars were in status 111 (they were in 102) to request the performance center delivery. This didn't happen until the end of May. Since I have access to make the request as soon as the car got a production week (week 38), I put in the request myself and got confirmation of the request. My friend got week 39--so this was looking really good timing wise.

In August, we were made aware of an event at the Performance Center in Spartanburg that would include BMW NA and the BMW CCA. It was for the first weekend in November. If everything worked out and we got on boats as early as possible...there was an outside chance that we could take delivery just before this event. I reached out to BMW NA and let them know about the request and event. They were very supportive of this...but they had no control of the vehicles and what ships they got on. So we were at the mercy of BMW AG.

And they weren't kind to us. My car was finished Sep 22, arrived at the port Sep 29 and my friend's was at the port a few days later. Still an outside chance...but unlikely looking at the schedules for ships. And there we waited for a month (well, mine was a month). We did get on the ship, but it wasn't until after the event. We arrived at Brunswick November 12th, but it didn't show up as being at the processing center (delivery center) for a few days. We still had to wait until the work orders were completed before getting a delivery date. Once that happened, the process was quick. We got a preliminary date of Dec 6 (and that switched to confirmed in a few hours)--about 3 weeks out at that point in time.

Now the scramble to secure flights (one way). We'd have to leave really early from San Francisco to get to Greenville Dec 5 with time to spare. So we booked a flight to leave SFO at 5:15AM and arriving in Greenville (via Denver) a little after 3PM eastern.

We also reached out to Extreme Colors well before production began and gave them a heads up and arranged the products: full front PPF, tints, and ceramic coating. These guys are super easy to work with and we had appointments set up for Dec 6 at 330PM for drop off (as soon as we had the confirmed date)--we gave them a heads up as soon as we were on a boat. The cars were done end of the day (roughly around 4PM) on Friday. So we had Thursday and Friday to kill around South Carolina.

We rented a vehicle in Greenville for getting around as we waited. We picked this up upon landing. My wife and I headed to the Performance Center to say hello to a few people, one of which wouldn't be there as he was headed to LA on our delivery date. We also arranged 2 hours of private instruction on Friday afternoon and my friends at the performance center were able to accommodate us on short notice. More on that later.

As you may or may not know, effective September 1 only vehicles bulit in South Carolina are eligible to have a PCD. Ours were requested well before that date, so that didn't affect us. Also effective January 1, no more hotel included with the experience.

So Dec 5, we had dinner (on BMW's dime) at the hotel. Breakfast was also included Dec 6 at the Greenville Marriott. It's a decent hotel, the staff was great, and the food pretty good. So at 740AM, we got on the shuttle bus to take us to the performance center. There were 4 other couples picking up cars. My wife took the rental over the performance center so we'd have a car after dropping off the CSs at Extreme Colors.

We've done PCD before--roughly 6 years ago in a 2017 M2. My friend was a virgin for this. I won't go into too much on the program itself since it's been well documented. Our delivery experience instructors were Andy van Cleef and Adam Seaman. I "knew" Andy from previous encounters, but really knew his son Tommy better. And I've known Adam for about 10 years--including his stint as lead at Thermal. The morning session consists of 3 exercises. You get to drive a car similar to the one you're picking up. But they don't have a CS, let alone 2, for us. They also had issues with differential fluid--so no M3 Comp xDrives either as those were broken in, but no run-in service done yet. So we got to choose a RWD Comp. We broke into groups. There were 3 M3 deliveries that day, so we had our M3 group and everyone else went to 2 i4s, and an X6. We first did the skid pad. And remember, this isn't a school. It's designed to let you know about the safety features of your new vehicle as well as some handling. So the skid pad was about demonstrating how traction control and DSC help you out. You get to spin the car with DSC off and then try with DSC on to demonstrate how the car is helping you stay on the road.

Next, we had the braking exercise, where you do full ABS stops and steer adding speed each run.

Then it was the handling course where it's continuous lapping of a small course so you get a feel of how your car handles. The whole session lasts maybe 1 1/2 hours or so. Afterwards, you get a hot lap in the M3. We had the pleasure of having Adam Seaman take us around the course that he seemed to make up as he went.

Then it was time for lunch, provided by the BMW Performance Center. And the food was amazing. Think we had fried chicken as well as some beef stew available that day with the fixin's. After lunch, the CS deliveries went to the Zentrum in X5s as the factory tour was unavailable. I've done the tour twice before and it's always good, but unfortunately my friend didn't get to see it. We did get a guided tour of the Zentrum museum which was fantastic. The tour took about 45 minutes and then Andy took us back to do the off-road course in the X5s. At one point, you'll get one wheel in the air completely and we had an indicated 23 degrees of tilt in the X5! Andy took a few pictures for us of this demonstration.

And then finally it was time for delivery! Our CSs were in the delivery bay. A friend who has done several deliveries (including the M4 CSL) reached out to the center and insisted that Hope took care of my delivery and so it was. Hope was fantastic, but being a product specialist myself, we just really chatted and didn't go over the vehicle too much. We set up the profiles and a few settings and I picked her brain on some of the obscure features and how they worked--like the auto program in the climate menu and when the heated seats come on automatically.

Eventually, we got the cars pulled outside for some photos. Then we headed over to the BMW CCA Foundation Museum just for some photo ops. Disclaimer: he's the President of the Golden Gate Chapter and I'm the Vice President. Then it was time to take the cars over to Extreme Colors and then we realized (before we really departed) that we left the rental over at the Performance Center. So a slight detour to get the vehicle and then over to Extreme Colors.

Then it was off to downtown Greenville for dinner.

More to follow. Will add video of some of the experience as well as a log of the cross-country tour.

Note: the original plan was to drive together across the country, but due to the lateness of the delivery, my friend had to get back to California by Dec 17 and had to stop in Texas prior to this to visit his husband's family. So we did 4 days together. We departed Saturday Dec 9 from South Carolina and did Tail of the Dragon before turning back down to Atlanta to pick up his husband and then off to Memphis via Huntsville.

Stay tuned for more.