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Title: Jim Learns to Drive!   

10/21/2003


Well guys, I'm back from BMW's M5 Experience. Man, what a deal. If any of you have 80 large laying around doing nothing in the markets or in your investments - buy a BMW M5 and invite me to the M5 school for no charge other than airline tickets. Yep, that's right - when a buyer steps up and buys an M5, BMW offers the M5 driving school for free for the buyer and a guest with the exception of the airline tickets and your bar bill!

OK, here's what we did. 

Day 1 the whole M5 group was brought from the Marriott to the BMW grounds bright and early. The first thing we did was see the unraveling of the 1st rolling BMW 645! We couldn't take any pictures, but that's not too bad of a start! The next thing we had to do was listen to a little speech about the lay of the land from BMW's prospective. Seeing we were going to be driving on BMW's 1.5 mile test track, there were some T's and C's to cover. BMW enjoys, read - incentives both SC and NC with cars and money to allow these "drivers ed classes" to use both the track, the interstate highways and the streets. So use a little common sense, was the thought for the day. Next, we went off to the dining hall to sign our lives away. Yep, we were responsible for the cars, the guards rails and whatever else we destroyed along the way. Basically, while on the track, there's no insurance, but on the public roads we were covered by our own policies. Next we were split up into two sections. Our section would do the track work the first day and the road trip the second day. When we first walked out the door, I knew how special a place this was. Not because of the ten's of million of dollars worth of Z8s, M5s M3s, 330is, and X5s. Not because of the 4 racing drivers/instructors that would be teaching us. Not because of the track layout which was pretty damn big. And not because of the repair facility, which repairs and maintenance this huge fleet of track vehicles, and is responsible for maintaining 5,000 associates BMWs. But simply because there was a group of automotive models there working on the 330s. And the were working all over them! Man, what a sight! OK, back to track work...

Track work! Yah baby! We did a ton of exercises all day. At the end of the day, we did a race that tested every portion of the training. The owners and their guests were pair together in one M5 with each person switching off after every 3rd run or so. The exercises in order were:

1) An anti skid lane with testing from various speeds starting at 40 and working their way up to 70 mph. 

2) A 1/2 mile slalom course consisting of a straight a way with a 180 degree low speed corner at the far end and a 18' skid "box" that the drivers had to stop in. Lot's of people skidded into "the living room" which was just on the other side of the "garage" that was the box. 

3) A 300' wet skidpad with running sprinklers pouring out a wall of water all the way around the skidpad. Our objective was to learn how to handle the car at speed with the DSC on and off! This translates into under steer and overseer respectively. BTW, the instructors could place the car anywhere on the skidpad they wanted in overseer with the DSC off for as long as they wanted to! This was a hoot!

4) Then we went to the short course. This was a road course with 5 corners and tons of cones which had to be navigated around and slalomed through. Not for the faint of heart! We cycled through the course with three cars on the course at any time and then got to our first competitive exercise. This was a two lap time trial at the same road course from a dead stop / flag start to a 18' "box" that was the stopping point. Two cars were on the course at any time being timed. Points were taken off - (actually read - seconds were added) for cones missed, cones clipped or flipped, and missing the box at the stop. I was the quickest of the first set of times with a 56.0 even. I had ripped the slalom well, been at the turn in points correctly and slid into the box about as hard as I had ever braked before. Then there was a 57.4 by PJ who rolls with a BMW 850CSi at home, while hubby owns the family M5, which as anybody knows has a 100 more ft/lps torque over the M5s! This high maintenance - knock out looking babe could drive! My buddy, Phil came in at a very respectable 58.1. The rest were slower than that. So this was a good start, but I knew that Phil had lots in reserve due to all his Skip Barber training. Bear in mind I may have been faster, but he was smoother!

The second round we went in the same order, which had Phil going ahead of me again. This was bad! And I'll explain in a minute. A couple of guys pulled some good times off, and then Phil ran. 54.7! Another guy did something like a 55.5. I had a great acceleration off the line and up through the 1st set of cones and up to the top of the hill where there is a 110 degree turn right which feeds into downhill short straight with a sharp left trap then another short straight with a right-hand turn feeding back onto the uphill section. This corner is tricky because it's a decreasing radius turn with an elevation change right in the middle of it! Anyway, the 1st lap was good and I was able to slide the car through the sharp left trap which allowed me to build my momentum up going the 5th corner. I was pretty hot through there and had a nice overseer drift out of the corner with the DSC off. Fortunately, I didn't run of road but I was way over the optimum speed for going through the slalom. I wiggled the rear a little extra, and ran the first couple of cones a little wide which bled off some of my speed a little and ran hard up the hill in third. At the top of the hill, I slammed onto the brakes, downshifted to second, and jabbed the throttle to induce snap overseer which it did, but I hit a cone. I could have flipped several of them because at this corner, they are every 3 feet on both sides. Boy was I pissed! I knew I had a fast run going! I was whacking the steer wheel using some unbecoming four letter words, when Phil said "Nail it, come on, get going!" So anyway, I snapped out of it, nailed the throttle and slipped through the next corner, came down the hill and skidded into the box! Time? 53.1, but with a 2 second penalty for touching, but not flipping, the cone at the top of the hill and another 2 second penalty for putting a rear tire off the track coming around the last corner the first time around, quite honestly, I didn't even feel it. So the net time was 57.1. At the end of the deal, I was the 3rd fastest through the short course with the 56.0 time. Later at lunch, our group bugged the instructors as to what their times were for the course. Would you believe they do it in the low 40's! Mike told me that their top speeds were not much higher than mine, but the differences were in the smoothness in the turns! 3 laps with Mike right after lunch confirmed this. How he was able to push the car so fast yet smoothly though the turns, and that was the difference. Although, with the DSC off, he spun the tires around the 1st turn about 300 ft into the first set of cones and still was able to wiggle the M5 though the slalom just as the slide was over was amazing! Worse yet he did it with one hand on the wheel, and figure tips at that!

Between lunch and the next exercises, there was an interest run in a M1. Here's a car that there were only 450 or so made and one was running around on the track giving rides to VIPs. Cool!

5) After lunch we did another exercise. This one was the one lane emergency change and the two lane emergency change. The way the one lane emergency lane change program is set up, is there is a straight a way with three lanes set up. The M5s were to go down the middle lane and at the point were the first set of leading cones were, the instructor calls out left or right. The driver has to comply and make the correct fast emergency lane change turn and then instantly as they're in the new lane, slam on the brakes. The double lane change has the cars either starting on the right lane and going to the left lane or vice versa. At least you know where you have to go and what you have to do, when you start your run! OK, these two exercises we started at 35 mph and worked our way up to as much as 70 mph, with the owners using their own decision or what speed to use. A couple repeated the exercise at around the 40-50 mph just to get comfortable with it. BMW wanted to limit the possibility for a flip overdue to an off road run off possibly.

6) Time for a little more fun. This time we turned the sprinklers back on at the skidpad and ran a course there that had us going around a similar track course like exercise 4, but had the "wall of water" and the skidpad to deal with as well! Got to tell you, every time I turned onto the skidpad with a bunch of steam, I was a little uncomfortable. But the M5 would "push" with the DSC on, so there was little to truly be afraid of. DSC works wonderfully! But boy was this fun! No timing exercise there. Then came the show down.

7) This was a group contest. In short we split into two groups and the 1st group ran the same course for one lap and then switched drivers followed by the next driver. Our other instructor, Bill, was the, in the car, instructor. Anytime the cars was in the skidpad with the DSC off, there was an instructor in the car for safety reasons. Anyway, the other group went first. They had some slow driver changes, a couple of cones, and a couple of big time "box" misses. Their total time for the 8 of them wasn't two impressive we thought, but no spins, the time was 18.5 something. 

I was the first in my group. We decided that we would go in height order going down. Then all the next driver had to do was push the seat forward button a little on the way in and be off. It seemed like a good strategy. I kept the DSC turned on, and punched off well. I was at the first two corners well and on to the skidpad with a little of a DSC push. I blasted around the skidpad, out the other side, around the slalom area, through the next corner, and skidded into the "box" perfectly. I jumped out of the car, tagged the next driver, and got out of the way. One by one, our drivers went out on the course and were doing well. A couple of guys missed the box but all in all we felt we were quick. And no cones hit. No one knew what the final time was, but when we got back to the track awards ceremony, we found out we were second as a group! It just goes to show you that sometimes things aren't what they seem. What's up with that? Even the other team felt we were the fastest group. 

Ok, that was day one. That night we had a group dinner with the head of the BMW training program as a keynote speaker. He told us of where the M series has been and where it's going. Also he told us that BMW will likely add one of these facilities in the West coast and in the NE soon. MB, Porsche, Jag and others are thinking of following BMW lead. And the song went on, but Phil, Dave, Pat and I headed to the bar for Game 6 which the Yankees lost.

Day 2

Again, back to the BMW performance center early. From there we jumped into a fleet of Z4's. Phil and I were about mid pack. We took a real quick ride up the street to the BWM manufacturing facility were they build the Z4s and the X5s. We watched a 15 minute movie on the production of the cars and then toured the museum and gift shop. There were some neat cars and motorcycles as well as other BMW stuff like airplane engines etc. interesting but small museum. I visited the gift shop because basically they had opened it for us ahead of normal visiting hours, so why not get something, right?

OK, this was a great day. The day consisted of a 12 car train, one blue BWM X5 4.6 in front, 10 gunmetal gray 3.0 ATXs with the 5 speed sport shifting Z4s in the middle, and one X5 4.6 in the rear. We went from Spartanburg, NC to Ashville, SC on mostly back roads. I won't get into the specifics of this journey because this is in writing right? All I'll tell you was this was a ball! I doubt whether many of you have ever had the chance to run like this on public roads with someone with 10,000 miles of Indy track experience leading you! Got it? We went through towns slowly, had fun once we left Dodge - It's an old cowboy saying...... We stopped for lunch at the Biltmore in Ashville. Well, there's more to it than that, but it's close enough for now! And what a place that is. When it was built by one of the Vanderbilt's about 1890, it had 42 bathrooms when practically the rest of NC didn't have any at all! Seriously, this place is amazing. It's still owned by the surviving family, but open to the public. If you ever have a chance go visit it! Anyway with the BMWs parked right in front of the place and thousands who had to walk a ways to getup the public driveway, we had lunch there and took a little time to visit the place. And then we took a ride around the grounds. Though I didn't see any specific information of the square acres size of the property, I would estimate it at a couple of hundred square miles, yes, miles! 10 miles by 10 miles at least.

Anyway I drove up, so it was Phil's turn to drive back. And drive back we did! There's one road that goes down a mountain with a whole bunch of switch backs, maybe 15-20, like the Christmas candy cane stuff. So picture the 12 BMWs going at a pretty good clip about 45-50 feet apart down this 45 degree or greater slope. Cool is not the word. Ice is! I was seriously glad Phil was driving. It was invigorating. At the end of the run., we jumped out of our Z4, put the top up which had been down ever since we left the factory, and hopped into our Mustang to go 150 miles back to Atlanta for our flight into NYC. At the last second Dave and Pat joined us. They had a short hopper to Atlanta, and were planning on staying a few days with family and friends to play some golf, but preferred to squeeze in with us vs. the plane. Frankly I wished Phil and I could have stayed in Atlanta to see the Pettit Le Mans race at Road Atlanta, but it was back to work for Friday. Anyway, I got home about 3AM Friday morning and had to go to work Friday. Most of the other M5 owners didn't have such worrisome problems to face the next day......

So as a quick rap up, because I have other things to do before work tomorrow..... The M5 school is a gas! If any of you are serious contemplating a BMW, look at the M series and see if there isn't a school attached with it as a new car purchase. If so figure 3K per person is about the value of the training at Spartanburg. It might just be worth buying an M car!

Thanks for reading, I hoped you enjoyed this, and I'm sorry if you didn't....

Jim Merriman
'91 OW Plus MTX 
'93 CR ATX
'96 ES ATX

Yeah I know this site is for V8SHO's. However you don't often get the chance to experience something like this. Nice job Jim!

Larry

 


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