Ich Bein Ein Blog Oct 26, 2007
Hi from Germany. I’m over here as the guest of BMW, checking out the really cool 135i. Imagine a 335i in a smaller, lighter package and you get the idea. It’s a little pit bull of a car, and is going to make a lot of track day addicts very happy. Not only the 305hp twin sequential turbo six-cylinder, but the trick Brembo six-piston front calipers. This thing was born to do track days. Look for a full report in the print version soon.
We also got the chance to check out the new BMW Welt, which is essentially a huge BMW theme park in Munich. The Welt is a shrine to all things BMW, and sits adjacent to the Munich factory, and the BMW Museum, which is currently undergoing renovation for a 2008 reopening. In the meantime, the Welt is where prospective BMW owners and fans can go to check out a bunch of cool interactive displays and the entire BMW lineup. New owners can also take delivery at the Welt in a specialized delivery area that turn the delivery of each new car into a production. By the way, taking Euripean delivery of your new BMW is free for American customers. You have to get yourself here, but the day-long experience, and the shipping of your car to the states when you’re done blasting around the Autobahn, adds nothing to the bottom line. Pretty cool.
Finally, we took the BMW factory tour, which is entirely too cool for words. Over 600 robots and 9000 flesh-bots roll a new BMW a minute off the assembly line. The robots are among the coolest I’ve ever seen in any factory,and could only be cooler if they were fighting each other, or perhaps fighting giant mutants. Apart from that, they rule. One fears the day they become sentient and turn on their human masters and spot weld them to the quarter panel of a 3-Series wagon. Here’s some video of the ‘bots doing their thing. Seriously, it’s worth the trip just to watch these things.
And as if that weren’t cool enough, Germany has full nudity on regular tv.
Tomorrow I’m heading west to the Nurburgring. I think there’s a ü in there somewhere, but I’m not sure where. I hope to take a few laps in my borrowed 325i before I have to come back to nudity-only-on-cable America. Full report on that coming up in print on that, too. More to come as get good internet. Later.
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