07-28-2019, 10:20 PM | #36 | |
There and back again
Join Date: Oct 2003
Carmudgeonly Ride: 2003 BMW 325xiT; looking for a new fun car
Location: New York
Posts: 2,939
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Quote:
Some dealers would (this is E46-era) go to bat for customers to get full Individual cars, even if they were something clown-car-like, such as Barney purple paint, orange (BMW: Arizona Sun) wood trim and lime-green seats with the full leather interior. Be glad you've never seen that in person. I actually found my dealer's parts department to be more willing to push* to get Individual parts than the sales department, so that's how I Individual-ized my wagon. * As an example, when the passenger seat lumbar switch was on permanent backorder, they VOR'd** it to get it to me in 3 days. I wonder what the parts picker in Germany thought about that. ** VOR: Vehicle Off Road - a BMW code meaning that this part is essential to normal vehicle operation. It triggers an inventory search of all dealers in the same country and if that comes up empty, goes to Germany***. Some things are flat out Unobtainium, like my Birch Anthracite trim. I had a guy in Germany try to buy a whole replacement set against a VIN that had that option, but the parts people went "Ja, but please give us a copy of the police report stating your trim was stolen first." So I had to find 13 or so VINs with that trim and have him order a single piece against a different VIN at each dealer. Fortunately it looked good enough when it was done that it was worth the effort. I also needed the Euro/Individual-only handbrake handle that has half leather and half clips for the Individual wood, but my dealer's parts department was able to get that for me. *** I once started a massive snipe hunt for the special "BMW fuzzy tape" that BMW uses for their wiring harnesses. This involved personal emails back and forth with the guy in charge of publishing the ETK, someone high-up in parts management, and eventually someone high-up in vehicle assembly who went and got me a roll out of some assembly storeroom and sent it to me at no charge. **** Yes, I'm imitating that Roundel columnist (Mark Buhler, maybe?) that tries to get at least 8 footnotes into every month's column. |
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