Where should I begin? Oh, the beginning of course!
I’ve always been a Japanese car guy. Sure, they’re torqueless, gutless cars but they’re also reliable, torqueless and gutless cars. I really like how vast the Japanese aftermarket parts industry is, even for discontinued cars. To this day some companies are still coming out with new products for cars that went out of production 10 years ago. Additionally there is an endless amount of parts available, both cosmetic and performance related.
I spent about two years building my S2000, it would sit in my parents’ garage and I’d work on it every time I flew in to visit. I had always thought about shipping it over to Korea but I always worried about how many speed bumps, terrible drivers, and overall terrible roads there are here so I was always hesitant. It’s really sad that it just sits there, but I really enjoyed piecing it together and making it “mine” so to speak. I just wish it got driven more.
As time went on I really missed having a “fun” car to drive. My first car over here was a 2003 Kia Optima but I literally hated it with a fiery passion and dreamed nightly of driving it off a cliff. Next I bought a 2009 Lexus IS250, which I really liked actually. At the time it came out it was loaded to the brim with features and some features it had I miss now that I’ve moved over to BMW – tilting mirrors for one, I’d prefer both over just one.
Buying cars in general is difficult as a foreigner. While I can get a US institution to loan me money, they won’t pay the dealer directly. Instead all checks are made out to the buyer personally, then you have 90 days to give your bank the title. And I’m ineligible for a car loan on the Korean economy. Also, Korean banks won’t cash US checks so I’m stuck cashing the check into US cash, exchanging it to won, then paying the car dealer in cash. It’s fine with a 2003 Kia Optima that you pay the equivalent of $2,000 for, but dealerships nowadays just aren’t set up to accept cash. When I bought my Lexus I had to bring the cash in a garbage bag because it was so many bills – maximum denomination is the equivalent of $50. The receptionist spent 30 minutes counting it all and it was only the equivalent of $15k! So the whole car buying process was a real turnoff and I wasn’t in a rush to buy anything. (Also, I may have exaggerated the garbage bag part – it was definitely a shopping bag though because it’s all I had access to at the time)
In case you’re wondering what a 2009 Lexus IS250 looks like…
Anyway… I got the itch. I heard about how various car companies have Diplomatic / Military Sales, but then I couldn’t really find any of those programs for anything other than BMW. The pros of the program are that you get great incentives, they ship directly to you, and you can ship it to the states when you move back. So that got me thinking, if I got a “fun car” BMW, what would it be? So I hemmed and hawed for about 9 months before I settled on going in to talk to a salesman about buying a M3 through BMW Diplomatic Sales.
Except I missed the new order cutoff for M3’s by, I kid you not, two days. Couldn’t order one anymore!
My backup was the M2. The main reason why I wanted the M3 is because I was used to sedans now and they’re actually quite utilitarian if you think about it, plus 425 hp! Plus, for the price I felt that maybe 365hp in the M2 wasn’t quite enough. The M4 would be nice but I didn’t want to pay the higher price for the coupe.
But apparently they stopped selling the M2 too. But they were taking orders for the M2 Competition, which I hadn’t really heard about.
So, I went home, did some research, and was immediately interested. I really wanted to get back into something fun and frankly the terms were really good. There is absolutely no haggling, the price they have is the price you get. MSRP – 10%, destination included. Not to mention I’m tax exempt through Diplomatic sales, so I figured I can even drive the car for 2 years and sell it for the same price I paid! There are very few cars out on the market you can do that with so to me it became a no brainer! In terms of looks I liked both the interior and exterior, I could get a MT, 410 hp sounded awesome, and the more I looked and researched the more interested I became. At this point some of you must be wondering “oh but Warren, I don’t understand, if you wouldn’t ship your S2000 because of the terrible road quality then why would you drive around in a brand new BMW??” Great question, glad you asked. I guess eventually I just got sick of not having a fun car to drive and decided to take the risk.
I was on a trip with my girlfriend, and I got back June 13th and went in on the 15th and placed my order along with the 10% deposit. Unfortunately what sucks about this process is once you order, you’re kind of stuck. Total payment is due when the VIN is issued, so if there are issues upon delivery of the car and you want a refund, well, they already have your money and it’s incredibly hard to get it back. So now I was in it. No turning back now!
Also, even though it’s a US spec, it doesn’t show up on track-my-bmw or any of those sites, so you’re at the whim of your dealer to get information and mine…. Mine didn’t share much.
Here’s the progression of the car from ordering to delivery.
15 June 2018 – Order made
18 June 2018 – Allocation Received – Week 33
19 June 2018 – Allocation advanced – Week 28
29 June 2018 – VIN created; balance of order due (in full)
12 July 2018 – Car complete
26 July 2018 – Car on car carrier Glovis Challenge
04 September 2018 – Car arrived at the port
18 September 2018 – Car delivered
I painstakingly watched the boat, Glovis Challenge, blip across the screen. It would move in and out of range of the “free” version of marinetraffic.com and I watched as it stopped for a day-ish in Southampton, stopped at the Suez Canal for what seemed like a prolonged smoke break, Singapore for what I assume is fuel but they certainly took their time, and then two different ports in China before finally docking at 5pm on Tuesday, September 4th. Which was actually right on schedule, well they were 5 hours late but I let it slide.
Want to see some screenshots???????
Customs itself was a nightmare, my dealer messed up the paperwork 3 times further delaying the process. I had to get my tax exemption stamp, so I got the paperwork from the dealer, took it to my customs office for the stamp, only to realize the import price was wrong. So I had to take it back to the dealer to get it amended. Then I got the papers stamped again, returned to the dealer, he sat on it for two days before sending it to the port, they reviewed it at the port and the port of origin was stated as the US not Germany, they rejected the papers and I had to wait for the papers to come back from the port so the dealer could amend it again and then get them stamped at my customs office to then take them back and get sent to the port again to then clear the car.
I have a thread documenting the whole experience.
Just in case some poor individual is googling around looking for information on importing a car through BMW Military/Diplomatic sales, well I hope Google takes you here so you can read that Kolon Motors in South Korea sucks and don’t do business with them.
All of these issues were exacerbated by the fact that I had to sell my Lexus before the BMW hit the port otherwise I wouldn’t be able to get my tax exemption, so I was driving around in a rental car and paying out of pocket for that and the rolling delays weren’t making it any cheaper. It wasn’t that the Hyundai Avante rental car was even that, well, bad, but I just… I just hated it I guess LOL.
Next was car insurance. What's interesting is cars over 8 years old can only get liability only insurance, so this was my first time getting full comprehensive insurance. So I paid about $1,100 for a year of full coverage insurance, at the Korean fair value. This means that I could go crash the car tomorrow and insurance will pay me $15,000 more for the car than what I originally paid in the first place. Awesome! But I think I'll pass on that for now.
Read on for the day we all wait impatiently for – DELIVERY!