Exactly eight weeks ago, to the day, I dropped off my new 2008 BMW 328xi Coupe at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.
This afternoon, I picked it up at Concours Motors in Glendale.
They said the European Delivery Program would take six to eight weeks from drop off, and I guess they weren't kidding. I tracked the car from Paris to Belgium to the North Atlantic ... then back to Belgium -- seems the "Elektra" transport ship had engine trouble and had to turn around. Then I tracked the new ship, the "Mignon" from Brussels to Nova Scotia to New York.
I learned when it was discharged, then I waited 10 days while it sat in customs. From there, I found it at BMW's Vehicle Preparation Center in New Jersey, where it sat for a week with some sort of work order involving the right front wheel. Finally, I learned when it left the East Coast by truck, arriving in Milwaukee yesterday.
One really does have a lot of information at the fingertips these days.
Still, I did most of the digging myself, using BMW message boards and advice from other European Delivery Program veterans. At times, I had more information than my dealer. The whole experience made me even more antsy than my normally antsy self. And that's really antsy.
There's something about making car payments when your car is floating across the ocean that gets the blood pumping.
That, and I spent the last eight weeks driving a combination of our other cars. Sometimes that meant carpooling with my wife. Sometimes that meant driving the '75 MGB in weather far too inappropriate for a vintage roadster. On one day, I even drove the scooter to work -- a terrible idea when it's cold and icy. Fortunately, my parents let me borrow one of their cars for most of the time (thanks, Mom and Dad).
So, people have asked me if I'd do the European Delivery Program again.
I'll still say yes, though I'm a little less enthusiastic than I was on Feb. 29 when we picked up the car in Munich. The cost savings are great, and the experience (in Europe, anyway) is totally unique. But between the $8 per gallon cost of European fuel, and those two months of phantom car payments -- BMW picks up one month --- it's not the cost-savings that make the trip a good idea.
Still, I've got the car. It's clean and shiny and fast, and while I didn't perhaps anticipate what two months without my car would feel like, I've got it now. I'm guessing it will be worth the wait.
Andy is the president, publisher and founder of OnMilwaukee. He returned to Milwaukee in 1996 after living on the East Coast for nine years, where he wrote for The Dallas Morning News Washington Bureau and worked in the White House Office of Communications. He was also Associate Editor of The GW Hatchet, his college newspaper at The George Washington University.
Before launching OnMilwaukee.com in 1998 at age 23, he worked in public relations for two Milwaukee firms, most of the time daydreaming about starting his own publication.
Hobbies include running when he finds the time, fixing the rust on his '75 MGB, mowing the lawn at his cottage in the Northwoods, and making an annual pilgrimage to Phoenix for Brewers Spring Training.
