Recently, I attended the BMW Performance Center Driving School, located between Spartanburg and Greenville, South Carolina. It is about a mile from their manufacturing facility and the Zentrum Museum. The track is one of the premier facilities in the world. The class I took is what the brochure calls the Two-Day Advanced Car Control Clinic. The instructors, all of whom have years of racing experience, teach three basic goals during this course. The first is to realize the performance capabilities of the BMW. The second is to push the limits of your driving abilities to become a better driver in the real world. The third is to have fun doing the first two.
There were 12 people in our class, including two married couples. The youngest was in his 20s, the oldest in his late 50s. The cars used were 2003 330i with Premium and Performance Packages, Steptronic, and Michelin Pilot Sport tires. All were equipped with two-way radios so the instructor and you were in constant communication. Orange highway cones were utilized as boundary markers. If you knocked over one of them, the instructor would let everyone know. Doing so during a timed event was a 2-second penalty. The building-block style of instruction included many different exercises, all of which required you to go either at prescribed speeds or as fast as safely possible. As one instructor commented to me on my first run, “you aren’t driving in a church parking lot”. Most runs had to end within a “stop box” by standing on the brake pedal to engage the ABS.
The slalom used a number of equally spaced cones, either on straight or curved sections of the track. Its purpose was to teach you to look ahead while maneuvering around the cones. The autocross was similar in that it taught you to look ahead around obstacles and at different reference points around curves.
There were four exercises that emphasized control under full braking. The first one was to see how close you could stop to a cone without hitting it using ABS after 200’ of full acceleration. The second one, called Interstate Braking, showed how ABS aids proper steering control during panic stops. At 50-60 mph, you entered a curve and stood on the brakes, controlling the car safely around the curve. The third one was Interstate Braking with wet road conditions. The fourth one was termed High-Speed Avoidance. This involved sudden one and two lane changes at 50-60 mph, coming to a full stop in the correct lane pointed in the right direction preferably on the pavement. What made this one interesting was the 20’ forward distance allowed for the maneuver.
Probably the most difficult and unnerving exercises involved the Skid Pad, a 300’ diameter strip of polished concrete with spraying water to simulate rain. As a warm-up, we rode with an instructor who did a continuous power slide around the skid pad at 60+ mph in an M5, ending with a 360 degree spin at the exit and driving off to the staging area! Two words come to mind which I won’t repeat here. Anyway, the purpose was to go as fast as possible following a yellow line around the pad keeping the car under control on the pavement in an oversteer condition (instructor riding with you momentarily pulls the emergency brake to put the car in a skid) and understeer condition (instructor turns off DSC). The car had excellent traction with DSC engaged.
To add a bit of competition, a few of the slalom and autocross exercises were timed. My favorite was the “Rat Race”. Two drivers, starting at opposite sides of the skid pad, chased each other through a combined slalom and autocross course for three laps.
Another really neat experience was taking an X5 on the off-road course. We did things with those vehicles that were amazing. One cool feature of the X5 allows the driver to push a button to control the vehicle’s descent down a steep incline, forward or backward, without touching the brake pedal. The traction of the X5 is great. At one point on the course, the vehicle was touching the ground with only two opposing wheels (it was actually rocking back and forth) yet it had enough traction to move forward. The balance of the vehicle is incredible. There was one rock-covered section of the course where you drove up a narrow and steep incline to a bridge you couldn’t see, crossed the bridge, and circled tightly around it at a 28 degree off-camber angle and down through the narrow space under the bridge.
An added treat was the “BMW Buffet”. This was the chance to drive other BMW models for a couple of laps around a combined slalom and autocross course. The vehicles were an X5 4.4i, a Z4 3.0i (with top down), a M3 coupe with SMG, a M3 coupe with 6-speed stick, a M5 (nothing like flooring this 400+ HP rocket down a straightaway!), and a 760Li (438 HP V-12, $130K, zero body lean and very drivable for a large luxury sedan – the ideal car for a cross-country trip). All vehicles had that basic great BMW feel. Even though there were a few 2004 5 Series at the Center, none were available for us to drive. And there were ten Z8s there as well.
Some key points I learned while attending the class. The 330 is definitely a performance vehicle. Correct seating position is crucial, not just for safety reasons, but to maintain proper control and feel of the car. ABS allows controlled steering during hard-braking. The instructors advised exercising the ABS on a regular basis in a safe manner (i.e., not on the freeway) to keep its internals happy. Keep your eyes looking ahead and in the direction you want to go, not where you are – always! This gives you better control if an evasive maneuver presents itself. This was definitely proven to me on my first High-Speed Avoidance run – I looked at the big green cone (simulating a stalled cement truck) I was trying to avoid and hit it squarely at 55 mph. During a skid, if you look in the direction you don’t want to go, that’s where you’ll go. Keep a firm, not tight, grip on the steering wheel so you can feel what the car is doing, especially under conditions that could produce a skid. BMWs are built to allow you to do that. They stressed keeping your hands at 9 and 3 on the wheel for best control.
I have been driving for 40+ years and this school was the greatest experience I’ve ever had behind the wheel. It definitely got the heart pumping and the adrenaline flowing. And it proved to me that a BMW, no matter which model, is The Ultimate Driving Machine. If you have a passion for driving, an extra $795 lying around and some time on your hands, this school is for you. Period.
Pete...
BMW Performance Center
M3s and M5s at the school...
There were 12 people in our class, including two married couples. The youngest was in his 20s, the oldest in his late 50s. The cars used were 2003 330i with Premium and Performance Packages, Steptronic, and Michelin Pilot Sport tires. All were equipped with two-way radios so the instructor and you were in constant communication. Orange highway cones were utilized as boundary markers. If you knocked over one of them, the instructor would let everyone know. Doing so during a timed event was a 2-second penalty. The building-block style of instruction included many different exercises, all of which required you to go either at prescribed speeds or as fast as safely possible. As one instructor commented to me on my first run, “you aren’t driving in a church parking lot”. Most runs had to end within a “stop box” by standing on the brake pedal to engage the ABS.
The slalom used a number of equally spaced cones, either on straight or curved sections of the track. Its purpose was to teach you to look ahead while maneuvering around the cones. The autocross was similar in that it taught you to look ahead around obstacles and at different reference points around curves.
There were four exercises that emphasized control under full braking. The first one was to see how close you could stop to a cone without hitting it using ABS after 200’ of full acceleration. The second one, called Interstate Braking, showed how ABS aids proper steering control during panic stops. At 50-60 mph, you entered a curve and stood on the brakes, controlling the car safely around the curve. The third one was Interstate Braking with wet road conditions. The fourth one was termed High-Speed Avoidance. This involved sudden one and two lane changes at 50-60 mph, coming to a full stop in the correct lane pointed in the right direction preferably on the pavement. What made this one interesting was the 20’ forward distance allowed for the maneuver.
Probably the most difficult and unnerving exercises involved the Skid Pad, a 300’ diameter strip of polished concrete with spraying water to simulate rain. As a warm-up, we rode with an instructor who did a continuous power slide around the skid pad at 60+ mph in an M5, ending with a 360 degree spin at the exit and driving off to the staging area! Two words come to mind which I won’t repeat here. Anyway, the purpose was to go as fast as possible following a yellow line around the pad keeping the car under control on the pavement in an oversteer condition (instructor riding with you momentarily pulls the emergency brake to put the car in a skid) and understeer condition (instructor turns off DSC). The car had excellent traction with DSC engaged.
To add a bit of competition, a few of the slalom and autocross exercises were timed. My favorite was the “Rat Race”. Two drivers, starting at opposite sides of the skid pad, chased each other through a combined slalom and autocross course for three laps.
Another really neat experience was taking an X5 on the off-road course. We did things with those vehicles that were amazing. One cool feature of the X5 allows the driver to push a button to control the vehicle’s descent down a steep incline, forward or backward, without touching the brake pedal. The traction of the X5 is great. At one point on the course, the vehicle was touching the ground with only two opposing wheels (it was actually rocking back and forth) yet it had enough traction to move forward. The balance of the vehicle is incredible. There was one rock-covered section of the course where you drove up a narrow and steep incline to a bridge you couldn’t see, crossed the bridge, and circled tightly around it at a 28 degree off-camber angle and down through the narrow space under the bridge.
An added treat was the “BMW Buffet”. This was the chance to drive other BMW models for a couple of laps around a combined slalom and autocross course. The vehicles were an X5 4.4i, a Z4 3.0i (with top down), a M3 coupe with SMG, a M3 coupe with 6-speed stick, a M5 (nothing like flooring this 400+ HP rocket down a straightaway!), and a 760Li (438 HP V-12, $130K, zero body lean and very drivable for a large luxury sedan – the ideal car for a cross-country trip). All vehicles had that basic great BMW feel. Even though there were a few 2004 5 Series at the Center, none were available for us to drive. And there were ten Z8s there as well.
Some key points I learned while attending the class. The 330 is definitely a performance vehicle. Correct seating position is crucial, not just for safety reasons, but to maintain proper control and feel of the car. ABS allows controlled steering during hard-braking. The instructors advised exercising the ABS on a regular basis in a safe manner (i.e., not on the freeway) to keep its internals happy. Keep your eyes looking ahead and in the direction you want to go, not where you are – always! This gives you better control if an evasive maneuver presents itself. This was definitely proven to me on my first High-Speed Avoidance run – I looked at the big green cone (simulating a stalled cement truck) I was trying to avoid and hit it squarely at 55 mph. During a skid, if you look in the direction you don’t want to go, that’s where you’ll go. Keep a firm, not tight, grip on the steering wheel so you can feel what the car is doing, especially under conditions that could produce a skid. BMWs are built to allow you to do that. They stressed keeping your hands at 9 and 3 on the wheel for best control.
I have been driving for 40+ years and this school was the greatest experience I’ve ever had behind the wheel. It definitely got the heart pumping and the adrenaline flowing. And it proved to me that a BMW, no matter which model, is The Ultimate Driving Machine. If you have a passion for driving, an extra $795 lying around and some time on your hands, this school is for you. Period.
Pete...
BMW Performance Center
M3s and M5s at the school...
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