BMW BLOG

Last week, The Diesel Driver spent an entire day at the BMW’s Vehicle Distribution Center in New Jersey and they were able to share with us some behind the scenes information.

For those of you that might not know, the BMW Vehicle Distribution Center (VDC) is the point of entry for all BMWs, Minis, and Rolls-Royce models arriving in the United States. This is a facility where your car will spend up to three days being prepped for the American market, and being repaired to factory specifications if any damage have occurred in transit.

For those of you that have been through the BMW European Delivery program, the process of tracking your car from its inception to delivery, can be quite intriguing and VDC is the one place that can speed up the process of your delivery. The amount of work these fellows are putting into, is admirable.

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As a toddler, you walked the enormous isles of the toy store, looking up at the shelves as though floors of a skyscraper. Filled with wonderment, you contemplated what you would really like to play with and you tried to pick out the perfect toy. Stumbling upon the toy car isle, your little heart raced with excitement. As Mom and Dad promised, you could pick out any one you liked, and bring it home forever. Your eyes finally fell upon the sparkling beauty, and in the days, weeks and months that followed, your new companion inspired dreams.

Unable to put it away, it was responsible for a few late nights spent driving across your pillow. It was responsible for the spilled orange juice from a head on collision. And it was no doubt responsible for your current love of cars. Read the rest of this entry »

Jalopnik and Microsoft’s Turn 10 are teaming up to release a custom-built car pack for Forza Motorsport 3. The Jalopnik readers get a chance to pick the cars that will be included and as expected, some BMW models are listed among many others.

Together with our good friends over at Jalopnik, we’re here to give you the chance to vote on the cars you would like to see in the game.

Here’s how this works:

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These are interesting times we’re living for car enthusiasts. That may seem obvious but today’s events with GM’s restructuring China officially becoming the largest consumer of cars and “hybrid” and “alternative energy” finding acceptance in the American car owner’s lexicon – the last time the automotive world saw such drastic change was the 1973 Oil Crisis.

That focal point of history and a page in time marked for change, it brought about wider acceptance of the smaller, efficient Japanese and European cars while American car manufacturers began the decline that has placed them in the perdicterments we see today. In 1973 – BMW managed to be toward the forefront of making efficient yet fun engines and, like they did nearly 37 years ago – they aren’t about to give up the game at another critical point in man’s continued development of the car.

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Regular tires vs. run-flat tires…..what a heated discussion this has been in the past few years and one of the ongoing topics here at BMWBLOG. Clearly after 70 comments left, majority of you favor the regular tires with the ol’ good spare sitting in the trunk.

Or…attached to the trunk?

Our friend Kamil over at CarGuyDad spotted recently an….let’s just say for now, interesting MINI Cooper. Nothing out of ordinary until now, right? Wait, we’re not there yet. What really makes this MINI so special in the spare tire attached to its trunk. YES, you read it right, no typo this time.

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Many of you might have already noticed the changes on here. Along with a more lean and mean code, which has significantly decreased the page load times, we have also rolled out an interesting feature.

The top section receives one of those uber fancy photo carousels that allows us to “manipulate” the way we display the news to you. Some of you might be asking yourselves: what does it really do?

Well, for starters, it allows us to select the news we would like to display there, from breaking news to some fairly recent articles that may have moved down the page or even on the second or third page. Those articles could be real masterpieces or they could simply relate useful information. Therefore, bringing them to your attention, increases the quality of our homepage and news reporting.

For now, we’re starting with the articles in the photo carousel, but that may change based on your input.

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Detroit Auto Show gave us an unique opportunity to speak with the BMW Design Director and the man in charge of BMW’s future design language, Adrian Von Hooydonk.

Born in the Netherlands, Adrian Von Hooydonk studied at Delft Polytechnic University in Holland and later at the Art Center Europe in Vevey, Switzerland, until 1992. From there he came to Munich, where he joined BMW as a designer. In the year 2000 he went to California to work for the BMW Group subsidiary Designworks USA. He was Director of the internationally renowned design agency from 2001 to 2004.

Then, under Bangle as the BMW Group’s Head of Design, he became Head of the Brand Design Studio for BMW Automobiles.

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BMW of Bridgeport joins the small network of dealerships that think outside the box. It all started last year when BMW Santa Monica kept the headlines for an entire month with, what we named, “Billboards War”. On the corner of Santa Monica Blvd. and Beverly Glen Blvd, Audi has put up some billboards showing the all new Audi A4 along with the headline: “Your move, BMW”. Santa Monica BMW, a local dealership, took on the challenge and responded with an M3 “Checkmate” ad.

Another unconventional billboard was recently reported to be displayed in Connecticut on Interstate 95, where the local dealership, BMW of Bridgeport put up an intriguing billboard showing a life-sized mannequin and teddy bear on top of it. The billboard is an advertisement for BMW of Bridgeport’s overnight test drive offer. The dealership’s general sales manager, Tim Coughlin, said there’s been very little negative feedback about the billboard, and they’ve gotten a lot of overnight test drives because of it.

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