BMW Showroom Grand Opening

BMW has a showroom in Dan's building and last night they had their Grand Opening. This is the 7 series sports coupe released in October of last year. The BMW guy for Beijing was telling us they always release their cars in China later because the fuel here is so bad compared to the rest of the World. On top of that you have gas dealers diluting it with water and other substances to make it even worse, this leads to their cars having more problems here than anywhere else in the World. They can pinpoint problems regionally. For instance, in a province north of Beijing their cars have a ton of problems, this is in a more rural area where gas dealers are probably dumping all kinds of chemicals into the fuel. Older cars and big trucks can handle this, but newer cars made with more electronic pieces take a beating. Of course, as far as the customer is concerned its a BMW problem, they're not going to buy into the fact that its a fuel problem. BMW has to make sure a car is totally durable before it introduces it into the China market. I thought that was kind of interesting. You have to admire a company that will go the distance to make sure they're delivering a good product even if the problem with their product is not necessarily their fault.

There are not many things I'm a sucker for when it comes to consumer items, but who could resist this toddler BMW bike, especially when you have a baby boy on the way.

We've been to a handful of these Grand Opening parties down in our area and usually walk away from them with cheesy handouts. This time we got something pretty good. A model BMW station wagon. Dan felt it was good enough to put on the shelf in his office. The food was also pretty decent. They served beef satay in peanut sauce, steamed vegetables, fried rice, fruit, chicken salad, marinated cucumbers, and lemon cheese cake. I was pretty impressed. We're still trying to figure out how the owners decide who gets invited to these things. Besides us and the BMW China rep from Austria, everyone was Chinese and they all looked like they were in their 20s. Maybe that's their target audience, rich, Chinese, young adults. I don't know but it was a pretty interesting event.