# Notes on PCD - Day 2 (The PCD Experience and Delivery)



## fabiani (Jan 14, 2013)

Continuing my story from the previous thread (Notes on PCD - Day 1), here are my notes and thoughts about the Performance Center day of delivery. One note: for this post I'm not going to use specific names of BMW employees. This isn't because they didn't impress us - quite the contrary. For those reading this who know who I am - great job! I'm avoiding names because I get the sense that as an employer BMW isn't exactly gentle with staff who vary a millimeter from the company line or the prescribed program. Overall the experience was fantastic, and I don't want anyone to get in trouble for anything I say.

*Getting Started*

Dave and I got up for our 6:20(!) wake-up call. Another note about this hotel: Most hotels ring the phone with an automated system to wake you. This Marriott uses real human beings with actual cheerful greetings. Just a nice touch.

We packed and showered the night before, which left us plenty of time to head down for the 6:30am breakfast. You can tell this hotel caters to lots of Europeans - all the typical American style foods are there (scrambled eggs, potatoes, and omelette station staffed by a very nice lady), but then in the middle there are hard boiled eggs and a plate of lunch meat, cheese and yogurt. Typical euro breakfast stuff. The best of both worlds.

Again with the tip however - They'd added an insultingly low (to the server) tip of maybe $4.00 to our bill. After taxes the server couldn't have paid for coffee with that. So again, augmenting the gratuities is something to consider.

As expected, right on time they rounded us up outside and put us on the hotel shuttle to the performance center. It pays to be late - the last three guys rode behind the shuttle in the 750  We had a total of 19 people. Would have been 20, but one person's partner was unable to attend.

*Greetings at the Performance Center*

When we arrived we were greeted, welcomed into the building and gathered in the lobby. Most of the cars were in delivery pods, which makes this a great opportunity to get a glance at your car for the first time. We couldn't miss ours; they ran out of delivery pods, so ours was in the lobby itself. I liked that, as I was proud of my little 328i. The other car in the lobby was an M3. Amazing how two cars, one double the price of the other, can both stand out as equally beautiful. Our delivery later was also to be in the lobby, which was fine. More to come on that.

Upon arriving they stowed our bags, reminded us to take our our release forms, and gathered us in the PCD classroom. The entire facility is beautiful, but I'll say the classroom is an exceptionally nice gathering space. They made great use of floor-to-ceiling glass for the exterior walls, which brings in light, makes the room feel bigger than it is, and provides a view to the staging area where you meet the cars you'll use for the hands-on portion of the program.

*Classroom Time*

The instructors each took a minute or so to introduce themselves - each with an impressive background that stands on it's own individual merits, but all different. The lead instructor went through the basic plan for the day - skid pad, braking exercise and slolem, then a hot lap with one of the instructors. Following that, he went into some basic driving tips and explained some of the technology we were going to learn about. The day focuses on Dynamic Stability Control and Anti-lock Braking and the material covered in the classroom explained the basic principles behind each and the circumstances under which they would be important. After the classroom piece was done, perhaps 10-15 minutes in total, we filed out of the classroom to our waiting cars. Each couple got a car similar to the car they purchased.

*Hands On Time*

Each group was broken up into groups of four cars and paired with an instructor. From there the groups rotated through three exercises. We were first on the skidpad. The skidpad is a polished concrete circular track of maybe 300' diameter with sprinklers set up as if it were raining so that it's very slick. With the instructor in the passenger seat each student takes a turn at the wheel, first running the track at top speed with DSC off. Predictably, this creates a spin from which it's nearly impossible to gracefully recover or prevent in the first place. As the instructor coaches each person, we circled the track such that we spun out twice. DSC is then re-enabled and the track is run again. This demonstrates that with DSC on it's fairly impossible to spin even with the most irresponsible driving. You can make other mistakes, such as not focusing on where you want the car to go and having trouble steering (given the angle of momentum and speed), but it's fairly tough to make even a 335i RWD spin around.

Next up was the braking exercise. Having done that, I'm convinced that every new driver should have this as part of his or her training. It's exactly what it sounds like. First, a demonstration on the nonlinear effect of speed on braking distance. The instructor had us try to predict braking distance at 20 MPH, then again at 40 MPH. He demonstrated personally for us first. *Spoiler alert.* As speed doubles, braking distance quadruples. Again, with each couple taking turns at the wheel the instructor, standing outside the cars this time, coached us through four stopping exercises. 40mph, 45mph, 50mph and 54mph. We sped up to the assigned speed, hit the brakes as hard as was possible at a predetermined spot on the very slightly curved track , and steered into a turn. If the steering was off, or you weren't looking where you wanted the car to go, or the brakes weren't hit hard enough you ended up landing in an imaginary parking lot or off an imaginary cliff (depending on how you screwed up.) Notably, the instructor standing outside of the cars on the track was able to tell our speeds to within a few MPH just by watching us. That was cool.

Final exercise was the slolem. Short track - maybe a half mile - with cones set up. Basic idea - go as fast as you can, use braking and throttle as appropriate into and out of curves, follow the "line" around the track and don't knock over any cones or hit another car. Again, each driver took turns at the wheel with about 10 laps each. The instructor did a fine job of coaching four cars simultaneously. This was tough for my partner, who is a new driver, but it was fun.

The last exercise happened for us at the very end of the day, but I'll cover it here. The off-road event in the X5 (or X3 for a couple who requested it) takes drivers through door-deep water and over rocky road at ridiculous lateral or vertical angles nearing 45 degrees, sometimes while simultaneously turning. In this exercise each driver gets his or her own car unless someone doesn't want to do it. Several times the driver has the sensation of being very close to tipping the car over (I almost tipped over for real according to the instructor), but the X5's systems including X-drive did a fine job of keeping everyone right-side up. This for me was the most disturbing exercise and leaves one with the ironic reality that, while you may not want to take a $70K luxury SUV on roads like that, it's difficult to imagine any other vehicle handing those extreme circumstances.

*The Hot Lap*

After all the exercises (or, for us, the first three) each couple jumps into a car with one of the instruction staff, who take M-class coupes flying around the larger track at a pace that exceeds the speed of sound. I only know this because I couldn't hear Dave screaming. This experience was, for me, a blend of (a) a great amusement ride (b) show-off time for the instructors, who do deserve to show off what is clearly a finely honed skill set and (c) something that serves to effectively wake everyone up and increase excitement for the remainder of the day. It was not, however, anything you can expect to learn anything from. I was watching my driver do what he was doing instead of watching the road or "being thrilled." I just wanted to learn something. Anything. But he seemed more bothered that I was watching him or, as he said, "checking him out." Whatever.

*Delivery Time*

Following the hot lap the group is divided in two. Half go to the off-road course and museum, and half get their cars. Then the groups trade places. We were in the group that got the car first. Delivery was, well, delivery. Demonstration of the important features, setup of preferences, an attempt at explaining 4 hours worth of content in less than a two hour block of time. The staff member who did our delivery was very nice. He was accommodating and did the best he could explaining the setup process. He was kind enough to install a software update that he happened to have on a flash drive. I'm not sure what the update did, but I'm glad to have it. It was of course very exciting to have the car delivered after such a long wait, though those two hours were a little anti-climactic. I'm still wrapping my head around why, but I think some are related to some of the critique in the next section.

*Critique*

So I figure if I'm getting flamed for this post it will be either for the length or for this section. Let me lead off by saying the overall PCD was incredible. I easily gained five very much unneeded pounds along with gaining our new car. I learned a lot. Everyone was professional, clearly respected the customers and each other, and all were exceptionally well qualified to be there. There is post after post proclaiming how wonderful PCD is on this board and I don't intend to disagree with any of them. If you haven't done PCD and you have the means you should do it.

On the other hand, there are some things that could be improved with just a few minor tweaks. I'm compelled to write them here.

1. * BMW needs to loosen the hell up on its staff.* The overall tension of the day was unnecessarily and surprisingly high. Empathetic as I tend to be, I had the sense that the entire staff is walking on eggshells for some reason. We could feel it the moment we walked in the door. The schedule of the day is packed, everyone seemed rushed and it was several times implied and several times explicitly stated by the employees that the place is run like Mussolini ran the trains in Italy. There's little margin for error-in-fact, as it should be. But there's also no allowance for creativity or flexibility. I'm sure part of this is a function of the incredible popularity of the program, the fact that they attempt to fit in as many customers as possible, and that BMW has a corporate desire to run the place like they run everything else - their way. But any manager would give his or her left lung to have a staff as talented as this staff. Yet the staff is clearly terrified that if they f^ck something up timing wise or fail to sufficiently pour the corporate kool-aid they'll find themselves out on their ear; that's not good. As a manager I well know that if my crew isn't having fun, our clients aren't having fun. Therefore, if my crew isn't having fun, I suck. And this crew isn't having fun. And one note to any BMW manager who happens to be reading this and is pissed off by it: taking the staff into a dark room and screaming at them to have some goddammed fun isn't going to do the trick. Go to an Apple store and learn something about keeping your staff happy. Or find a job keeping trains running on time somewhere.

2. *At no time during the program - classroom time, hands-on time or delivery - did anyone ever ask us if there was anything in particular we wanted to know.* The program needs to go a little lighter on the predetermined content and a leave some room for the clients to define what they want to learn. Both during the hands-on program and during delivery there were some specific things I wanted to learn. I tried asking during the hands-on program but it was made clear (again, in part a function of issue #1, above) that it wasn't going to happen. And by about the midpoint in the day it was clear that we weren't allowed to ask and if we did the staff wasn't allowed to answer. The content is so pre-determined, hard and fast that there's no room to fit anything else in even if they did ask. And god forbid they drop some content in order to accommodate the questions I had about spinning out of control, braking hard, driving at breakneck speed or even about the features in my own car. Summarized, I suspect that there's a catch-22 in place where the staff knows that people have questions and, as fellow human beings, they'd like to engage with us customers and enthusiasts - but they have rules and those rules say cover x material in y amount of time or else.

3. *Stop it with the corporate kool-aid.* At one of the rare moments of downtime I asked one of the staff about a technical problem I'd heard was common in the 3-series (the VANOS issue). He or she, after some very uncomfortable silence, simply looked me squarely in the eye and and stated plainly that he or she didn't know of any such problem. The look on their face and tone in their voice clearly said "I'm lying, I have thoughts to share, but on pain of death I am not permitted to talk about these things." This crap is so far from acceptable that it's not even funny. I suppose it is why the staff are no longer allowed to post here and it's why the PCD experience is not nearly as good as it could be.

So that's it. I left out the museum, but it's a museum. Use your imagination and you'll be right.

In short, do it, love it, try not to feel too bad for the people who work there and don't bother asking questions. RTFM.

Any questions, PM me.

Steve


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## DDGator (Mar 4, 2013)

Cool write up. I am posting my own here shortly.

Interestingly, I will say that I did not experience any of the three things that formed your critique. Our group to drive was small, and our instructor was very accommodating and answered a lot of questions. Also, our delivery specialist told us a number of things that he probably shouldn't have. I thought everybody involved was pleasant and seemed to be having a great time with their job.

Of course, different days bring different things and probably different staff. I am also under the impression that there were a lot of BMW big-wigs in town this past week for the new X5 introduction--so maybe that makes a difference.


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## alee (Dec 19, 2001)

Thanks for the report and the perspective. I'm ambivalent about a real human call -- I think it would really freak me out.


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## fabiani (Jan 14, 2013)

alee said:


> Thanks for the report and the perspective. I'm ambivalent about a real human call -- I think it would really freak me out.


:thumbup:


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## TCB (Feb 27, 2006)

DDGator said:


> Interestingly, I will say that I did not experience any of the three things that formed your critique. Our group to drive was small, and our instructor was very accommodating and answered a lot of questions . . . I thought everybody involved was pleasant and seemed to be having a great time with their job.


I agree. I've done PCD twice and neither time experienced the staff being on edge or unwilling to answer questions. Everyone we met, from the instructors & delivery specialists to the servers in the cafeteria line were cheerful and welcoming. I suppose that having a bunch of BMW corporate bigwigs on site could make some employees uneasy, though.

Overall, a great review! :thumbup:


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## airportdoc (Sep 9, 2011)

Kudos; an excellent writeup. My recent experience with PCD was great; but we had a small group of nine people. The staff was very receptive and answered questions. The engine light came came on about 50 miles after delivery and I turned around. They diagnosed the problem to a loose sensor and replaced the whole throttle module instead of tinkering with and trying to fix the sensor.

Would recommend the experience to everyone at least once.


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## rmichae9 (Apr 27, 2008)

Great review, Steve. Sorry there were some aspects you didn't like- I will look carefully for those for my PCD on 9/3. I have done a one-day M school and a two-day M school, and didn't experience any of the things you mentioned. Derek was a hoot. Jim was so funny that I even laughed when he was being serious. Sorry I can't remember other names, but I really enjoyed everyone. I understand things may be different at M-schools as opposed to all-comer PCD...

Alee (or anyone else recently), have you heard/read how things will be different after our ED? I know we will not get the vehicle introduction, which is fine, but hopefully we will be scheduled so that is the last part of our day and we can get out a bit early to start driving.


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## alee (Dec 19, 2001)

rmichae9 said:


> Alee (or anyone else recently), have you heard/read how things will be different after our ED? I know we will not get the vehicle introduction, which is fine, but hopefully we will be scheduled so that is the last part of our day and we can get out a bit early to start driving.


With my PCD, I picked up the car after lunch and we were done and could go. They put me in the group that did the museum and off-road course first. We were done by about 1:30pm.

I think that was by design. Anyone else post-ED that left any later?


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## TN_3 (Oct 4, 2007)

I believe this is by design...If they were to do the vehicle deliveries for ED customers before lunch, there would be a long down time for those customers, while the normal vehicle deliveries were conducted.


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