# M4 pcd 10/14/16



## Snareman (Nov 24, 2006)

Had my PCD yesterday. It was an amazing experience. Stay tuned for the vid which is going to be a 9GB file!! Yikes. I guess I'll do 1080 next time instead of 4k.

Flew into GSP. I called the Marriott for the shuttle. She said to give her a minute to check on how long the driver would be and came back to say that Pierre would be over to pick me up in a silver X5! Pierre was a super personable guy who seemed very knowledgeable about BMWs. Many of the Marriott employees have done the PCD experience so they can better relate to customers. What a great idea with the BMW/Marriott cooperation!

Pierre did a great job (I can't say I've ever thought this of a driver before). He drove me back to the hotel and then came in and stood at the desk with me to make sure I was checked in ok. While we were standing there Rob, one of the other bellhops, went out to the X5 and brought my bags in. He came over, introduced himself and said that he had been looking at my schedule and had seen that I had a free day between Friday PCD and Sun/Mon M school and that he had come up with some things for me to do and I should come see him. I was pretty impressed that they were that on top of my schedule. Back to Pierre - he stayed with me til I was checked in and then brought my bags up and into my room and took my dinner reservation time. I went back down for dinner at 8 and he saw me standing there waiting for the hostess and instead Pierre just came over and sat me himself. While I was at my table he came by with some M school gifts that he took up to my room while I was eating. He's remembered me through the course of the weekend.

The hotel is great. BMW logoed menu is a nice touch. Dinner and breakfast are included.

Wow, that's a lot and I'm not even to the BMW part yet. 

We all met in the lobby at 7:40am. There were 8 of us picking up cars and while I was solo, most had a guest. The shuttle driver was also a great guy.

We arrived at the PC and they broke us into groups for our delivery specialists and to get our waivers. We then all went to the classroom where Matt, Donnie and Mike introduced themselves. Matt went over some stuff for about 30min and then we were out to the cars.

Our group was 3 cars, all M's, and we drew the skid pad first. I'm glad I'm sticking around for M school because just a few times around that was barely a taste. One time for a 360 with DSC off and then a few more laps attempts with it on. It was fun watching everyone else go through it and was later amazing doing the hot lap watching the instructors do it. Our car and the one in front of us were drifting about 10ft apart around it! Crazy.

Next was the emergency braking exercise. I think my biggest take home from Matt was that each doubling in speed equals 4x the stopping distance. Practical example he gave - while going 40 in the 20mph school zone doesn't _feel_ that much different, there is a 4x change in the distance it'd going to take you to be able to stop. It's just physics.

The handling course was next. The walkthrough following Matt was helpful and I certainly got more comfortable taking the turns faster as the laps went on. Because I was by myself I got twice the seat time that most others got in the exercises. Even though I was driving, I was still slightly nauseous after 16 laps around that fairly small section of track. I'm going to bring the Zofran (nausea med) with me tomorrow to M school. I've heard that ginger candy is helpful and I know that peppermint is also supposed to be good for nausea.

We then all got back together for the hot laps which were quite eye opening at the skill level of the instructors! It wasn't as scary as I might have imagined it being and I was a little nauseous after that as well, but it dissipated quickly.

The slow off road course in the X5 was a nice change of pace for my stomach. Apparently they would normally take us to the Zentrum, but it was closed until next week as they just got done remodeling. (I did manage to go back later found that it was employee day there, but they were kind enough to let me in to walk around.) So instead of the Zentrum we went to the BMWCCA museum which was fairly interesting. It was sort of a large garage with about 10-15 old BMWs of various types and a makeshift gift shop. We drove our mini-fleet of X5s over to the offroad course. Its certainly enlightening to see what those _luxury_ SUVs can do! They said they can take a 45 degree side to side angle without chance of rolling. We probably had them a little over 20 degrees which still seemed pretty far.

Next was lunch. There were a surprising amount of people there for lunch who were clearly not part of our group. When I went to get in line the woman working in the food area [apparently saw my PCD wrist band and] cut me in front of about 8 people, I guess maybe because we were on a schedule? I told the people I had no idea why I was cutting in front of them all, but was just following instructions. :angel:

I stopped by the gift shop after eating and managed to not buy anything, although the 15% CCA discount was a nice temptation.

Some people had their official delivery before lunch and the rest of us after lunch. Because I'd done Euro Delivery they just had mine parked out front with the other ED cars, which still had our Euro plates on the front. They did a great job keeping the cars hidden from us until this point and I hadn't even really realized it until one of the instructors jokes before we went in for lunch, "No snooping around looking for your cars!"  Willie came out and helped me put my plate on. I chatted for a good long while with some of the other PCDers and then we were all off. I went over the Zentrum, took a few pics and wiggled my way in on Employee Day.

Here is my M4 with a yas M3 that another EDer was also there taking delivery of. We took a bunch of pics with both of us with both of the cars figuring it we might never be near another Yas M.

Here is the video

https://youtu.be/Dt_OF2wAHxE


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## jjrandorin (May 8, 2013)

Nice write up! I would love to be able to take performance center delivery, but dont think I would want to drive back to california from there. I did get a chance to go to Performance Center West recently for a 1 day M school. which was pretty amazing so I have an idea of what you felt.


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## mazdamx594 (Sep 3, 2013)

I'm glad to hear I wasn't the only one who felt nauseous, I thought maybe it was nerves?!


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## Snareman (Nov 24, 2006)

Updated with vid


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## Snareman (Nov 24, 2006)

mazdamx594 said:


> I'm glad to hear I wasn't the only one who felt nauseous, I thought maybe it was nerves?!


Yeah, I'm hoping my stomach cheers up some, and I'm only a quarter of the way in to it!!


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## SloTUrtle (Aug 30, 2016)

Awesome write up.....man I can't wait for mine in a few weeks!!! I have a feeling Im going to blow some money in the store buying a bunch of t-shirts...lol


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## cruise_bone (Jun 6, 2007)

Great write-up!

I am heading up to Greenville tomorrow night by train for my PCD on Tuesday.
Can't wait to finally get my M3!


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## Snareman (Nov 24, 2006)

SloTUrtle said:


> Awesome write up.....man I can't wait for mine in a few weeks!!! I have a feeling Im going to blow some money in the store buying a bunch of t-shirts...lol


Don't forget you get a 15% BMWCCA discount if you're a member.


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## Snareman (Nov 24, 2006)

cruise_bone said:


> Great write-up!
> 
> I am heading up to Greenville tomorrow night by train for my PCD on Tuesday.
> Can't wait to finally get my M3!


Congrats on almost redelivery!!  It's a top notch experience!


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## calbears96 (Oct 31, 2009)

Snareman said:


> Updated with vid


Nice video. Impressive you got both Matt and Mike as instructors


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## Snareman (Nov 24, 2006)

calbears96 said:


> Nice video. Impressive you got both Matt and Mike as instructors


Thanks. We had a great group!


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## mazdamx594 (Sep 3, 2013)

So what's the final thought on the m school. Awesome I hope?!


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## Snareman (Nov 24, 2006)

mazdamx594 said:


> So what's the final thought on the m school. Awesome I hope?!


It was some crazy and amazing driving. Doing the demo laps with the instructors was a whole other level of aggressive driving. I did get kinda nauseous on some of the longer lapping sessions and that was with _me_ driving even. The instructors are immune to it much in the same way I'm immune to blood and ripped off body parts working in the ER. Now that I'm home and see vids and stuff on it I miss it. I'm now technically qualified for Advanced M School, but I'm not sure I'm ready for that one yet. Overall, I'd definitely recommend it. I just wish it was a little cheaper.


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## mazdamx594 (Sep 3, 2013)

I had the same nauseous feeling a bit, but it passed. Was the m school substantially different from the PCD school or just more track time?


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## Snareman (Nov 24, 2006)

mazdamx594 said:


> I had the same nauseous feeling a bit, but it passed. Was the m school substantially different from the PCD school or just more track time?


I would say it was drastically different than PCD. PCD is just a very slight taste. In M school you do A LOT more driving, A LOT more aggressively on lots of different sections of the track as well as several versions of the entire track. YOu learn to take that big turn out past the skid pad going ~60-70mph. You do 2 different types of skid pads - the round one and a figure of 8 course on the upper skid pad area. You get a lot of time to attempt drifting as opposed to no time on PCD which is just the 1 360 and a few laps with the control on. There is more in depth instruction both in the classroom as well as out on the track. You get to drive all M cars (2, 3, and 4). You get some free (included?) gifts (jacket, polo, t shirt, carabiner). The longer lapping sessions were over 20min of continuous lapping on large sections of the track. They'd have instructors placed at multiple locations during those sessions to both give instruction as well as to relieve congestion if necessary. You also do timed events and are scored against other students.


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## Snareman (Nov 24, 2006)

Here are a few pics of the M fleet


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## mazdamx594 (Sep 3, 2013)

Thanks for the description. I asked because the performance center website makes the two courses sound similar, but what you described sounds awesome and definitely different. I want to go back so bad.


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## sorfmk (Jan 6, 2013)

Recently ordered a new M4 with PCD. Dealer was asking for full payment before delivery.

Anyone know if this is typical as I would expect to make the payoff at pickup at the dealer,
but in this case, at the BMW performance center.


Thanks


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## innovativeit (Sep 30, 2007)

sorfmk said:


> Recently ordered a new M4 with PCD. Dealer was asking for full payment before delivery.
> 
> Anyone know if this is typical as I would expect to make the payoff at pickup at the dealer,
> but in this case, at the BMW performance center.
> ...


I have done four PCD deliveries since 2011 and always completed the purchase prior to taking delivery in SC. I think that is standard policy.


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## Shon528 (Oct 3, 2003)

The Performance Center does not handle any of the financial aspects of the deal. I've done PCD twice and both times, the paperwork, payment, etc was all done/finalized about a week before picking up the car.


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