BMW Group University announced an exciting new class this year: Ultimate Immersion. This is a two-day workshop that is meant to take you on a journey through BMW’s History and helps employees love the brand and products even more. This course takes place at Palm Desert at the Performance Center West, and it includes an off-roading course to see the capabilities of SAVs; learning about the innovations BMW continues to push for; and a deep dive into the brand, its technologies and evolution.
Sebastain Sandoval, the Service Drive BMW Genius at the dealership, had the opportunity to get enrolled in this course. He was selected to participate considering his promotion as a new BMW genius in the Service Department, where he can help customers get more familiarized with the brand and the vehicle features when they drive our courtesy vehicles.
Sandoval spent his first day acquiring new knowledge about how BMW made the transition from motorcycles to cars, what advancements they have made with each car type, and what BMW has in store for future cars. Meeting people from all over the country in his group-building activities was one of the highlights of his day.
“It was cool to hear from other people that come from a completely different dealership that were from the opposite side of the country. Talking to people with a passion for BMW cars was insightful because I got to learn something from them,” said Sandoval.
The second day was the highly anticipated part of the event-- track day. This day was when participants got the opportunity to drive various BMW cars to test the cars capabilities on different racetracks.
Sandoval drove on three racetracks including an all-dirt road, skid pad circle and an actual racetrack. The dirt-road event was to test how well the X7 performs when it comes to inclines and declines; as well as testing the traction control against the dirt. The skid pad circle track was a circular-slick course to test the M340’s traction and drift panels. In the case that the M340 were to lose control of traction on the road, participants learned how they can prepare and handle this occurrence. When it came to the last track, the world racing track, it was three laps of straight-line racing to test the Z4, M2, M4, X4M, and X5M, in the areas of speed, braking and turn radius.
Sandoval’s experience when driving these cars was eye-opening and exciting. “I see these cars all the time at work but when you can go out and see what these cars are made of, it’s an even greater experience. I think my favorite car to drive was the X5M because since it is more of a bigger car, I wasn’t expecting it to handle certain turns and tight corners,” said Sandoval.
He also said, “I would totally recommend someone to go when they have another one, I learned so many features on different cars that I tell customers about all the time. It truly was an amazing experience.”
This course is open to all job roles at the Dealership but not limited to BDC staff, Technicians, Service Advisors, Managers, Client Advisors and BMW Genius. If you are interested in attending one of these BMW events, contact your manager or see People Ops for more information. We hope you are selected to attend!