2003 Sterling Gray 540i/6 - European Delivery

It all started back in March of 2002. That's when my husband and I travelled to California to pick up his 2000 BMW 740iL. Click here to read that story. Well, once I had driven that sweet car, I knew I had to have a BMW of my own. The 7 series is just a bit too big for me (even just the "i"), so I started looking hard at the 5 series. I definitely liked it, and once I heard the rumors that the next generation was going to resemble the E65, I decided it was time to buy. I had always liked the idea of doing European Delivery, and was quite pleased to find out it is actually cheaper. I did a couple test drives to make a final decision on the exact model (it really wasn't much of a decision after I drove the 540i/6), found a great deal on airfare, and the rest is history!

Tuesday, 10/15/2002: The journey begins

We travelled from Seattle, WA to Munich, Germany via Copenhagen, Denmark. It was a long trip, but we were excited to finally get to Munich on 10/16.

Thursday, 10/17/2002: Pickup

I could hardly sleep, I was so excited to go get the car. We took a taxi over to the delivery center. The outside is pretty ordinary looking, but inside they have a small cafe and boutique.

We spent about 15 minutes going over all the paperwork with our customer service rep, then went to the garage to check out the car.

The car had 2 miles on the odometer!

We saw a bunch of different kinds of BMWs, including the "C1".

We drove the car back to our hotel to pick up my parents. The hotel had a "ladies parking" area, but it was way too crowded for my new automobile!

We then headed out on the Autobahn towards Chimsee, a large lake southeast of Munich. Wow, what an experience! It was a little rainy, so we kept it around 90 MPH. (There is just something messed up with that logic.) We were able to get our first good pictures of the car at Chimsee.

In and around the little village where we had dinner:

Friday, 10/18/2002: BMW Museum and Factory Tour

We headed back into Munich for the tour and museum. Originally I thought this was poor planning on my part (I didn't realize the tour was only offered in English on Mondays and Fridays when I selected Thursday for our pickup), but we appreciated any reason to drive the car.

This is the BMW "4 Cylinder" building. The round building above is the museum.
There was lots of cool stuff in the museum, including this opened-up 750: