[Bmwguy11]

Just having gone through this process myself, I thought I would take everything I've learned over the past 2 months and create a new updated thread. The information in this guide was compiled from information in the existing sticky, the september build thread, other forum posts/threads, and good old google searches. So let's begin!

This guide was written for the M3/M4 in mind, but the vast majority can be applied to ANY BMW that is being ordered and built in Germany.

Ordering:

Step 1: Find a dealership with an allocation.
When you are looking to place an order for your vehicle, I suggest trying to find a dealership with an allocation. An allocation means that the dealership has an open "slot" available right now with a build week for a specific vehicle. An allocation means you have a car. If you have a dealership you can trust, you could place an order with them even if they don't have an allocation. But without an allocation, you are relying on the dealership to fill your order with the next allocation they get. To find a dealership with an allocation, simply call around.

Tips:
-Your first question should be "do you have an allocation?" Note that M3 and M4 allocations are separate and are not interchangeable.
-Contact high volume high performing dealerships such as the ones found here with Center of Excellence awards. http://www.edmunds.com/car-news/32-b...xcellence.html
-Ask forum members or check the pricing threads. Members often provide leads on great dealerships.
-High performing dealerships also tend to get the most allocations or can even trade with other dealerships for allocations.
-If you want to do ED (European Delivery) or PCD (Performance Center Delivery) make sure you mention this right away as well.
-You do not necessarily need to buy from a dealership near you! There are many dealerships across the country who would be willing to ship the car to you after they receive it, provided you pay shipping. Even with cost of shipping this can be a less expensive option than going with a local dealership who won't budge on pricing.

Step 2: Agree upon a purchase price.
Before you mention anything about whether you are going to finance or lease or rebates/incentives, agree upon a purchase price. There may be some exceptions to this, such as certain corporate discounts which you have to mention to the dealership right away. But aside from that, always get an agreed upon purchase price BEFORE applying incentives or rebates. To find out what rebates are available check the BMW site and do a search on the forums here for incentives. You could also check the "pricing thread" of your vehicle's forum.

Tips:
-Check BMW site for offers. http://www.bmwusa.com/standard/conte...ms/offers.aspx
-Be sure to read the fine print on rebates and incentives, as some of them have requirements. If in doubt ask on the forums.
-I would check with the pricing thread on the specifics of leasing/financing as well as the pricing of your deal. As an example, here is the 2016 M3/M4 pricing thread: http://f80.bimmerpost.com/forums/sho....php?t=1135003

Step 3: Place your order
Once you have an agreed upon price, get it in writing! Then, place your order, put down your deposit (if required), and ask for your production order number. (if your dealership had an allocation) This is a 7 digit number that ties you to the allocation. You should receive this production number within a few hours or within the next day at the latest.

Tips:
-The production order will be used to track your car and check status. So keep this number handy!
-Ask your dealer what the build week is of your allocation. The build week is the week your car is tentatively scheduled to FINISH production. It will start production a week or two before then.
-Here is an image of my order. You can see the start of the production order number. Notice it also shows my port of entry BALPOA (port of baltimore)




Tracking:

Tracking your car is a process in and of itself. You can sit back and relax, or you can drive yourself crazy with obsession. Either way, it's a fun ride.

The Tracking Basics

To start, learn the BMW Genius phone number. 1.844.4GENIUS (443-6487) BMW Genius has access to the same information as your dealership and is invaluable in helping you get your status. Initially your order will probably be status code 111 within a day of ordering. Then once it's closer to production it will move to status 112, scheduled for production pack. Then, status 150. When you start production (status 150) you'll be able to get your VIN number.

You can also track your car using the My BMW site with your production order number, and the automated 1800 number, but both tend to be several days behind and out of date. https://www.bmwusa.com/secured/content/forms/login.aspx For the 800 number, call 1800-831-1117, option 2, then say "vehicle production status". Note: Do not be concerned if you enter your production order number into the My BMW site and it shows the wrong colors/options. That is normal and will update much later in the process.

Here is a list of common status codes and their meanings:
0 Order deleted by NA
17 Order not Specified
37 Order is at BMW NA
47 Order is at BMW NA (no production allocation available)
87 Production Week Assigned
97 Order sent to AG
100 Order deleted by AG
101 Error in data transmitted
102 Special Order (no Prod Week)
105 Order out of Prod. Period
111 Order Accepted at AG****If ordering individual color, once the order has been accepted, it is locked and can not be changed!
112 Order scheduled for Production
**** Up to this point you can still make changes to the car such as options, colors, etc. Once the car goes to status 150, you cannot make any changes since the car is now in production! If ordering individual color, once the order has been accepted status 111, it is locked and can not be changed.
150 Production Started
151 Body Shop Started
152 Paint Shop Started
153 Assembly Started
155 Production Completed
160 Released to Distribution
168 AG Stock
170 Waiting Workshop
172 Planned for Workshop
174 Workshop Entry
176 Workshop Complete
180 Waiting for Export Dispatch
181 Waiting for Domestic Dispatch
182 Schedule for Carrier
190 In transit to port of exit
191 Returned to BMW AG
193 Arrived at Port of Exit
194 Selected for Shipment
195 Shipped from Port of Exit
196 Shipment Arrival at destination port?

General Timeline of Events

The first thing I want to mention is that the start time of your car being built is completely determined by the build week attached to your allocation. It doesn't matter when you placed the order! BMW dealers can request an earlier production week, but I have yet to see any requests granted in that regard so far. Also of special note, Individual options (such as special interior color or paint color) will always delay your build by weeks or even months, so be prepared. Please note that the timeline below is for US delivery Priority 1 vehicles. ED vehicles may see additional delays at port/vpc.

The second thing I want to mention is that your build week is actually the week your car is scheduled to FINISH production. So, it should start production a week or two before the build week.

Lastly, the timelines below are general, if everything goes as planned. There could always be delays if you get stuck in customs, or if your vehicle had some damage during shipping (repaired at VPC), etc.

-Build start (150) to build finish (155): 1-2 weeks.
-Build finish (155) to Scheduled for Carrier (182): 1 day.
-Status 182 to 190 (on a train to bremerhaven):1-3 days.
-Status 190 to 193 (at port awaiting a ship): 1-2 days.
-Status 193 to 195 (on a ship): 3-5 days for east coast delivery, 5-12 days for west coast delivery (more detail on this later)
-Shipping time from Bremerhaven to East Coast: 12-17 days depending on the number of stops.
-Shipping time from Bremerhaven to West Coast: About 30 days.
-Offload at port: 1 day
-Processing through customs: 1-2 days
-Process through BMW Vehicle Processing Center (VPC) and onto a carrier: 2-5 days.
-Shipping time on carrier to Dealership: 1-4 days.

Production Plant to Bremerhaven

BMW M3 and M4 convertible are made in Regensburg, while the M4 is made in Munich. (see screenshot)



After production the cars are put onto a train and take a ride on up to Bremerhaven, Germany. Bremerhaven is a major port, not just for BMWs but also other auto manufacturers and shipping. Once at Bremerhaven, the cars sit in huge parking lots waiting for their ship. When it comes time to board the ship, specially trained drivers will drive the cars onto the ship, where they are tied down and secured. BMW ships on what are known as RORO carriers (Roll on/Roll off).

There is a web cam at Bremerhaven, and in fact when the BMWs show up on the train, you can often see the train sitting there. The second camera is the Bremerhaven Webcam: http://www.blg-logistics.com/de/kontakt/webcams/

Here is a picture of a car train. I joked around that the car circled in blue was mine.



Here is a satellite image of Bremerhaven, with the above webcam position circled in blue.




Video of a BMW train on the way to Bremerhaven

A quick note about west coast vs east coast bound vehicles. The East Coast tends to see more ships, so the wait time at status 193 at the port is generally 3-5 days. However, west coast bound vehicles do not have as many ships that deliver there, so the average wait at port (status 193) is longer, around 5-12 days.

Determining Which Ship You're On

Up until now, you have been getting updates from BMW Genius that are generally within the last 24 hours accurate. But this is where the updates slow down. To start, you will not know your car is on a ship until about 2 days AFTER it's already been put onto a ship and left the dock. The most common carrier used for BMW is Wallenius and Wilhelmsen, with Kline and NYK a close second. Below is a link to the various shipping companies BMW uses and their shipping schedules or search pages. Here you can play for hours, searching the possible ships your car will be on based upon the destination port and shipping date, etc.

http://www2.nykline.com/vesselschedu...nableCheck.nyk
http://www.nykroro.com/customer/schedules.html
http://www.2wglobal.com/webapps?url=...ppSchedules%2F
http://www.arcshipping.com/schedule/
http://www.kline.com/ Then click on schedules > RORO
http://www.molroro.com/MOLVesselSchedule.aspx

About 2 days after you are on a ship that has left port, BMW Genius can also provide the name of the ship and estimated date of arrival at your port of destination.

However, if your car ends up on a WW boat (Wallenius Wilhemlsen), your VIN will show up in their search page about 2 days after your car has left the dock. Simply go here and enter your VIN into the Cargo ID field. Remember if you end up on a ship that is NOT with WW, it won't ever show up on the WW tracking page. https://www.2wglobal.com/webapps?url...uickSearchPage

Here is a screenshot of what it looked like for me, and is also how I found out my car was on a ship.





Once you know which ship you're on, you can use the links above to look up the ship schedule with the carrier, and see what ports it will be going to and when.

**Special note about ED: When you dropped your car off they should have been able to give you some information including possible shipping schedules or a special phone number to call and find out which ship you'll be on.

Tracking the Ship

There are several sites you can use to track a ship by name, or look at port schedules. For "free" tracking, I found http://www.marinetraffic.com/ to be the best. Here is a screenshot of Bremerhaven from marinetraffic with the BMW port circled in blue.



Simply search for your ship on the marinetraffic site and you can get status so long as the ship is relatively close to land. Once the ship leaves the main areas near land and heads into the open ocean, it is only possible to track via Satellite. For this, you can sign up for a 14 day free trial on FleetMon. To do this, go here http://www.fleetmon.com/plans and upgrade to the Unlimited Sat 15 plan. You will have to enter your credit card or paypal but they DO NOT charge you for it, so long as you cancel before the 14 day trial ends. You can actually sign up for it and then cancel it an hour later and still get the 14 days. To cancel, go here http://www.fleetmon.com/my/profile/subscriptions

Once you have signed up for the trial, you need to add ships to your fleet that you want to track. To do this, search for the ship by name, click to add to your fleet and check the box for satellite tracking. Below is an example of the "my fleet" page I was using to track all the september build ships in our thread.

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You can also check for port schedules to see your ship's estimated time of arrival as it gets closer. To do this go to Marine Traffic and search for the port city name, click on it, then on the left side click on "expected arrivals" tab. Then click "show all" at the bottom and you can see all scheduled arrivals along with estimated arrival (not always available).

If you don't want to sign up for the trial, there is a free site that you can get occasional updates on position, but they can be a couple days behind. http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/search.phtml

You can also check out the site http://www.shipspotting.com/ and search for your ship. You might see recent pictures of port stops your ship made along the way while your car was on it. In fact, here is a picture of the ship my car was on in Bremerhaven the day it would have been loading up my car. http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/...hp?lid=2329763


Lastly, if you have a west coast bound vehicle, you can watch your ship go through the Panama Canals with these web cams. http://www.pancanal.com/eng/photo/camera-java.html

Here is the Mignon going through the Gatun locks on the webcam. I took each 1 minute screenshot and compiled them into a moving image.




Arrival and Processing at Port of Entry/US

Once your ship arrives with your car, specially trained drivers once again drive the cars off of the ship. They are then driven to a large parking lot for staging and processing through customs. If you have a car shipped via WWL you will be able to see status update on the tracking site using your VIN to see when your car clears customs.

After clearing customs, the car will be at a staging parking lot/area. At this point as far as BMW knows, the car still is "shipping" and you won't get any update until AFTER your car gets to the VPC. Priority 1 cars (customer sold, US delivery) are bumped to the front of the line and processed first. It will usually take 2-4 days to get through the VPC. If you did ED, this process can take longer. Your car may be at customs longer before it shows up at the VPC.

Here is a screenshot showing my car's processing through VPC. My car was offloaded on 10/3 but did not get through customs until 10/5. Fortunately my car was immediately brought to VPC 10/5 to start processing, but this isn't always the case. Then you can see 10/7 the final work was done and then released to carrier. Once the car shows as released to carrier, this means it is ready to be picked up by the carrier or is with the carrier. There isn't really much you can determine at this point, unless your carrier has a tracking system.



While at the VPC they wash the car, inspect and repair any damage, and then get the car scheduled with a carrier who will deliver the car to the dealership, usually on a car carrier truck. If there is any extensive damage it will be reported to the dealership.

As an example, here is a satellite image of the VPC in New Jersey.



Here is an article (it's old) that details what happens at the VPC. http://www.e90post.com/vpc/index.asp.htm

Once your car is processed, it will be loaded onto a carrier. There are a few that BMW uses. One of the most common right now is United Road. You can search for your VIN here if you want. http://www.unitedroad.com/search-by-vin.php But BMW Genius will be able to tell you what carrier you are on and the estimated date of arrival to your dealer!

Bonus Stuff

Here are a few videos that show you things like what it's like inside the BMW factories and even inside a RORO carrier.

[BrooklynGreyM4]

Thanks for providing this! It's definitely helped me track my car throughout the production process.

[KevinGS]

Unbelievable information, many thanks!

[jailonacs99]

Good find; hopefully all still relevant! I'll look forward to using this info when I finally can get my allocation.

[KiloCo]

" New Member" Allocations were released on Wednesday. Does anyone know how long is the wait to get a Production number in California. I already have the vehicle report. Order status 047

[Moo]

Once in status 112 (scheduled for production), if any simple changes such as exterior/interior colors are made to the order, could the production day/week get pushed back?

[GOLFFRR]

old bump! 6 years!! Nice thread/info

as always, no production number = no allocation.

also ED is not available for US markets as stated in the OP post

also with the G8x models the allocations can be modified.

M4 allocation = base/comp/RWD/AWD whatever buyer would like to spec.
m3 allocation = base/comp/RWD/AWD whatever buyer would like to spec.

[chicagofan00]

Originally Posted by Moo

Once in status 112 (scheduled for production), if any simple changes such as exterior/interior colors are made to the order, could the production day/week get pushed back?

In theory, no it really shouldn't. However, with the crazy supply chain issues we are currently seeing it is possible that a change in options or colors (even as simple as it appears) could delay the order. We saw some people being delayed due to interior color selections or wheel selections and then when they changes to a different one they went into production within a couple of days of the change.

[e90post_user]

There should be a correction - WW doesn’t allow search by a cargo ID anymore citing security reasons.
The best way to determine which boat your vehicle is on is to call BMW Genius hotline.

[jailonacs99]

Does OP know that his post from 6 years ago is finally stickied because of how useful it is? It clearly took a lot of time and effort to put together, and it didn't get a single reply back in 2015!

[chicagofan00]

Originally Posted by jailonacs99

Does OP know that his post from 6 years ago is finally stickied because of how useful it is? It clearly took a lot of time and effort to put together, and it didn't get a single reply back in 2015!

This was copied over from the F80 forum and has lots of replies there. It was copied here to help those with tracking their G8x as well since a lot of the info remains the same.

[darrelljs]

Originally Posted by Bmwguy11

You can also track your car using the My BMW site with your production order number, and the automated 1800 number, but both tend to be several days behind and out of date.

It’s odd but the genius line (at least the automated status part) seems to be behind bmwusa. Today genius says I am in Quality Check while bmwusa says I am at port waiting on a ship .

Darrell

[yzzabelle]

Hi!
My new i3 docked in Halifax 4 days ago. Since then, I am unable to track its progress! I know that BMW is using Hansen to ship from Halifax to Québec, but I entered my VIN on their site and it keeps saying "Not found". I sent them an email to verify and got no answer. I have a trip planned on the 19th and am really hoping I can get my i3 before then. Can anyone tell me if the Hansen site's response to my VIN is normal? They ask for a postal code, do I enter the dealer's postal code for the search? Any help will be appreciated as I am on the edge waiting for that car for so many weeks! Thanks a lot

[Alex_Bond]

Small clarification - M4C looks like built-in DINGOLFING, GERMANY based on VIN info.

[evilalien]

Is this still accurate? This would be a great post to update/replace and maintain.

Has anyone been able to successfully track shipping for a west coast Canada car? Mine is in 193, sitting in Bremerhaven waiting to be loaded. I'd really like to be able to track progress in more detail than my dealership can provide. "MyBMW" is next to useful for Canadians, we don't get the same features as our US-based friends.

[Hubie33]

Dude, this is incredible information and learned so much. I have a week 20 production (May 2022)a nd thought that was the start of production, but was surprised that you noted it is actually the completion week. Cool!

I do have an individual paint color and was told by my dealer that this would be built at a different factory. My assumption was that this could potentially speed up the process, but you seem to feel it creates additional delays. Is that fact based or assumption. Would love to know how you came up with that?

For example a week 20 build is mid May was told that if the starts align I could be looking at a delivery of late June or early July. My port is Halifax and live on the east and in close proximity.

[vj123]

Originally Posted by Hubie33

I do have an individual paint color and was told by my dealer that this would be built at a different factory. My assumption was that this could potentially speed up the process, but you seem to feel it creates additional delays. Is that fact based or assumption. Would love to know how you came up with that?

Individual paint vehicles are produced along the vehicles with standard paint. Manufacturing plant is based on the model, M3 or M4, not based on the options.

Individual builds will most likely see additional delays as they are grouped into batches unlike vehicles with standard paint option.

[Mark Kez]

Originally Posted by Hubie33

Dude, this is incredible information and learned so much. I have a week 20 production (May 2022)a nd thought that was the start of production, but was surprised that you noted it is actually the completion week. Cool!

I do have an individual paint color and was told by my dealer that this would be built at a different factory. My assumption was that this could potentially speed up the process, but you seem to feel it creates additional delays. Is that fact based or assumption. Would love to know how you came up with that?

For example a week 20 build is mid May was told that if the starts align I could be looking at a delivery of late June or early July. My port is Halifax and live on the east and in close proximity.

Your experience/process maybe different than mine, but it most cases this will be the norm. Any individual color will add anywhere from 3-6 weeks to your build. I ordered a M440 individual color Zanzibar 2 last year and it added 6 weeks to my build. FYI

[vj123]

Additional links which might be useful to track order updates.

Vessel schedule to US (East coast):

https://www.walleniuswilhelmsen.com/schedules
https://www.klineglobalroro.com/schedules.html

Vessel schedule to US (West coast):

https://www.walleniuswilhelmsen.com/schedules
https://www.nykroro.com/customer/schedules.html

Stop sale:

https://bmw-recall-tool.netlify.app/
https://www.bmw.co.uk/en/footer/quic...e-recalls.html

Charleston port schedule (Columbus Street Terminal):
https://scspa.com/berthing-schedules/.

[Jacob54322]

If your vehicle was on scheduled for production and you called your dealer to add the carbon exterior package… would it update on the bmw tracker. Yes or no ?

[Molon Labe]

Originally Posted by Jacob54322

If your vehicle was on scheduled for production and you called your dealer to add the carbon exterior package… would it update on the bmw tracker. Yes or no ?

When I made a change, my dealer sent me the new build sheet and my garage showed the change immediately.

[The Nerd]

Originally Posted by Jacob54322

If your vehicle was on scheduled for production and you called your dealer to add the carbon exterior package… would it update on the bmw tracker. Yes or no ?

Hate to break this to you….but, if you make a change in 112 (scheduled for production), it immediately shows up in MyGarage. As others have also pointed out, I too made a change in 112 and it showed up immediately.