BMW Factory Delivery at the Spartanburg Performance Center: 2012 BMW X5 xDrive35d – The Diesel Driver – The Joy of Diesel Driving

TIME TO DRIVE  ON THE TRACK

The driving instruction starts off with a series of exercises covering braking and collision avoidance, slalom, and finally the wet skid pad.   As someone who has been driving BMWs for many years, I’ve long come to appreciate the handling that is inherent in each car but it was interesting to see people who were new to the brand experience this for the first time.

The skid pad was one area where we didn’t drive the X5 since the car’s xDrive all-wheel-drive system wouldn’t really allow us to do what the instructors had in mind.  Instead, we drove a new 3 Series sedan.  (I was able, however, to talk one of the instructors to taking us onto the skidpad after lunch with an X5.)  If you’ve never been on a skidpad, you are missing out on something.

Make sure to view the Skidpad and Slalom Virtual Tours

After two hours of intensive instruction and driving, it was time for us to see our new Deep Sea Blue X5 xDrive35d.  As a veteran of numerous European Delivery presentations, which have ranged from the BMW Welt’s unveiling of the new car on a revolving turntable as one descends the “Hollywood” staircase, to a more humble delivery at BMW’s airplane-hangar like facility in the Freimann section of Munich, which is no longer in use, to the Mercedes-Benz Kundencenter in Sindelfingen (a town near Stuttgart).

The experience at the Performance Center was short on flash but long on product presentation and knowledge.  Our delivery specialist, Jonathan Stribble, covered all of the features in the X5 in an easy-to-understand fashion and there was much to learn about the X5 in terms of features that simply didn’t exist on my previous cars.

During the presentation, we were given the opportunity to personalize the various setting of our car.  Since we had a four-hour drive ahead of us at the end of the day, this was a good opportunity to become familiar with the car and get it ready for our journey.

At that point, we were only halfway through the day.  Everyone stopped for lunch at the Performance Center’s cafeteria.  In the dining room, we found specially-designated tablecloth-covered tables for delivery customers and a wide range of hot and cold entrées, sandwiches, and desserts.

After lunch, before we went off to the “Other Roads” off-road course with the X5 diesel we had been driving earlier, Matt took us to the skidpad with it.  Here we saw how the car’s xDrive system makes it much more difficult for the car to pull away but, for fun, we did learn now to make the car spin out a bit.

Click here to continue to Page 3 – Other Roads – BMW’s Off-Road Course

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