BMW Driving Experience back in business

Better BMW drivers will be rolling back onto Australian roads through 2021 as the company re-activates its driver training program.

BMW, like Porsche and several other driver-focussed brands, was forced to furlough its driving school because of COVID-related lockdowns and difficulties for both instructors and students in crossing state borders.

Now BMW is moving straight to top gear with its full three-level BMW Driving Experience events.

The only exception is the growing number of overseas owners who want to travel to Australia for a driving holiday and a visit to a classic track such as Phillip Island in Victoria,

“We were off the road for 12 months. The last session was in March last year and we have just started again, with a program at Phillip Island at the end of February,” said Brendan Michel, who is responsible for driver training as well as head of product and market planning for BMW Australia.

“We do the courses to promote our brand and provide driver training. The best way to experience and understand an M car is to drive it on a track.”

Michel says the courses are extremely popular with BMW owners but particularly the people who drive its flagship M cars including the all-new M3 sedan and M4 coupe that have just landed in Australia.

“We do the Advance 1 course and the Advance 2 course in Australia. Every single M customer gets a free voucher to attend the Level 1 course.

“It’s all track based. There is also emergency braking, done on a wet surface, and we do an off-road component as well if there is a location available at one of the tracks we’re visiting.

“We put roughly 2000 people through in a year. And we get people from all over the world coming here, especially when it’s running at Phillip Island, because they just want to drive that track.”

The chief instructor is Kevin Flynn, with former Supercars racer Cameron McConville as the fast-and-polished ‘marquee’ driver for high-performance enthusiasts.

“We’ve usually got between three and four instructors running the days. All of them are trained in Munich and go to Germany to get certified as driver trainers.”

The driver training fleet has also been updated for 2021 and beyond with a focus on the new M heroes.

“We did get an express-post delivery from Munich to get our M3s and M4s in time to resume in February,” Michel says.

“So we now have a mix of the M3 and M4, X3 M, M40i, M2 Competition and Mini JCW.”

The coming year will see 72 days in total, with training courses at Phillip Island, Sydney Motorsport Park, Queensland Raceway, The Bend outside Adelaide and Wanneroo Park in Perth.

But the courses, which are all done with BMW Australia’s cars so owners are not driving their own vehicles on a track, are not cheap.

The cheapest course is a half-day ‘taster’ which costs $650, then things ramp up to the Advance 1 course at $1395 and finally the Advanced 2 course, also known as ‘International M Intensive’, at $2200.