From Order to Delivery, My Hera Mica Blue M3

Ordering a new car from BMW is an exciting process, but the road from order to delivery isn’t always going to be smooth. For me, this process started back in November of 2017 when a friend of mine became the GM of a local BMW dealership. We made a deal to take my previous M3 in on trade, allowing me to take advantage of the amazing holiday incentives being offered by BMW in late 2017. These incentives allowed me to order a new car, with more options than my last car, for only a small amount more per month. Once I realized just how good of a deal this new car could be, the race was immediately on for me to find and pick a color, and for him to find a buildable allocation. Fast forward one week, I’ve picked the color and he has the allocation. Unfortunately, this does not mean we’re all good to go. All individual color approvals need to run thru BMWNA, approved by the factory, and then sent back down to the dealership. In my case, after a little more than a week, the factory accidentally came back approving Petrol Mica, not Hera Mica. To rectify this, we had to do some groundwork to find a paint code or the VIN of a car that was painted in this color (Hera Mica Blue is P5R, in case anyone out there is looking for it). Once we had that, we resubmitted and got the appropriate approval for Hera Mica Blue. You’d think that now, surely, everything must be fine, but it was not. In the time it took for the color approval to come back, the production number (allocation) that we obtained had flipped into production and was not modifiable anymore. Why this happened is anyone's guess, the car had a clear stop on it, so as to not allow this to happen, but it happened anyway. After a few days of speaking with BMWNA, my client advisor was able to secure another allocation, and we finally were set. I had a VIR (Vehicle Inquiry Report) in hand, stating both my production number and the special order color in the notes. From here on out, the rest of the process was mostly smooth. There were huge delays on Individual orders at the time that I placed my order, and the car wasn’t originally scheduled to be built until Production Week 18 (PW18), which is in late April. After about 2 months of waiting, the car got pushed up to PW13 and was produced in late March. Below is the timeline of events and BMW status codes for my order: 11/28 - Color Requested 12/6 - Wrong Color Approved - (Petrol Mica) 12/15 - Right Color Approved 12/21 - Status 102 - Special Order - Estimated PW18 02/09 - Status 102 - Special Order - Estimated PW13 (Moved up to last week of March) 03/05 - Status 112 - Scheduled for daily production pack - PW13 (as estimated) 03/09 - Status 150 - Production Begins - Estimated Completion 03/29 04/02 - Status 155 - Production Completed 04/05 - Status 160 - Vehicle handover to Sales 04/05 - Status 181 - Handover to distribution 04/05 - Status 182 - Handover to carrier/load assignment 04/16 - Status 190 - Dispatched from AG 04/17 - Status 193 - Arrival at port 04/25 - Status 195 - Shipped from port of exit - Assigned to the WWL Undine 05/14 - WWL Undine has arrived at the Port of NY/NJ 05/18 - Arrival at Dealership As you can see, one of the biggest delays after production was the gap between being handed over to a carrier to take the car from the factory to the port, and actually leaving the factory. No one was quite sure why this happened, but my car did get momentarily stuck in this position, as I know of other cars produced after mine that made it onto ships before me. All in all, the car was absolutely worth the wait, and the individual Cohiba Brown interior compliments the exterior color very nicely. In another post, I’ll be covering all of the modifications done to the vehicle, as well as some tips and tricks for installing some of the more common parts like black grills and side markers.