Saturday, July 17, 2010

I Failed the BMW Test

I tried to buy a BMW a bit ago.

I just picked a dealership at random and started walking around the lot until I found one I liked. It was a Series 3 Coup with silvery tint on the windows. It was a very nice car. A salesman approached me and we struck up a conversation. Eventually I told him I wanted to take a test drive and he said that'd be great. But he surprised me when he asked for my "BMW certification card". I told him I'd never heard of such a thing which prompted him to apologize profusely but he insisted I have a certification before I could drive the car. "It's no problem sir" he told me, I could take the test and get certified on-site. So he grabbed a clipboard and keys to the Series 3 and off we went. The drive was mostly uneventful. The car handled great, it really was a remarkable piece of machinery. But as we pulled back into the dealership lot I could tell something wasn't right. After I turned off the car the salesman looked me in the eye and said "I'm sorry sir, you failed the certification test and I can't sell you this car." I was stunned. What could I have possibly done wrong? "Well sir, I noticed that you have an iPhone and it rang several times during the drive but you didn't answer it once. This resulted in you having both hands on the wheel almost the entire drive. Then there was your focus, you really stayed between the lines the whole time, almost like your attention was really all about the drive. It was as if you acknowledged that there were other cars around you and drove amongst them with consideration for them. That was the other thing, you actually yielded to another vehicle, that totally blew me away. And at one point, on that narrow country lane, when you passed that bicyclist you moved over to the left. At first I thought you might not be paying attention so I started to add points but when I realized you did it intentionally to give him more room I had to subtract points. I also noticed a disturbing level of turn signal usage throughout the drive. I mean, you signaled for every single lane change and every single turn, I tried counting them but I really just lost track after a while. I don't want to make you feel bad but you did almost everything wrong on this test. Even when you pulled back into the parking lot you only took up one space and you parked nearly perfectly within the lines of the parking space. I'm sorry sir, but BMW has spent decades building a level of trust and expectation with our customers and the general public. We have an image to maintain and I hate to say it but you're just not enough of a douche to buy a BMW with tinted windows. I truly am sorry."

1 comment:

  1. haha, scary but so much of this is true! you forgot the part about speed limits not applying to the bmw drivers.

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