This is my first write up so take it easy on me. So back in July 2013 my dad announced that he was going to Germany on a business trip and invited me to join him at the end and tour Germany and Austria for 4 days. Of course I said yes and told him that I wanted to visit BMW in Munich and he agreed. Previously I had heard that you could do rentals from BMW and decided that I would go for my favorite car, the M5 F10, for two hours. It was a long month to wait for the trip.
Left Minneapolis on August 14 and arrived in Amsterdam the next morning and made my connecting flight to Dusseldorf (very nervous as I was 17). Met my dad right off the plane and we boarded the train to Munich. The train was delayed two hours, so instead of getting into Munich at 7:00 PM, we arrived at 9:30, which gave us almost no time to do anything, as we had to get up early because we were picking up the car at 11:00 the next morning and we wanted to do the Welt and the Museum before picking up the car. Next morning we woke up early and took the U-Bahn to BMW. I have always been a BMW fan and my best moment was walking up the steps from the U-Bahn and seeing the BMW headquarters and The Welt.
We checked at the On Demand desk to make absolutely certain that the car was still ours and it was, but our pick up had been pushed back 30 minutes because the car had been returned that morning instead of the night before and they had yet to clean it. So we looked around the Welt for a few hours and went to the Museum. I really enjoyed the museum, but it was a little confusing the way it was laid out, and I only realized after looking at the pictures that we had missed seeing things. Anyway, after seeing the Rolls Royce museum, we headed off to the On Demand desk where they informed us that our car was ready to go.
They walked us down and showed us the car and explained how all the M settings worked and stressed to us that we were NOT allowed to turn the ESC off. We asked the attendant to program in a destination that was around an hour away and made use of the Autobahn and away we went. We exited the Welt and within a few blocks, an E46 M3 convertible pulls up next to us. We still had the car in Comfort mode when he floored it off the light, my dad being veeery competitive also floored it and the M5 just took off and destroyed the M3. We finally got onto the Autobahn and we cruised along at a steady 120-130 mph. A little boring but I was still living the dream being in German, on an Autobahn, in an M5 and I'm only 17. Not many adults get to do this. Anyways, we turned around in the town that the assistant had programmed in for us.
Now you have to be 23 to drive any BMW On Demand car, but that didn't stop my dad from turning a blind eye. I hopped in the drivers seat and turned all the settings to Sport +. I only got to drive it for 15 minutes, but it was on some really nice country roads where I got to see what the M5 could really do and it is an amazing piece of engineering. So I turned it back over to my dad and he put it back in Comfort and we headed back down the Autobahn towards Munich going the same speed. When we saw that it was clear, my dad pressed the pedal to the floor and we hit the 145 mph! We pulled back into the Welt about 10 minutes late, expecting some angry comments, but the assistant was totally cool about it when we apologized.
Overall an absolutely amazing experience for a car geek like me. And too make a great day a perfect day, as we were walking around downtown Munich afterwards, we saw the BMW i8 in its camouflage. If you ever go to the Welt, I strongly recommend BMW On Demand if you have time. The price for our 2 hours was 235 euros.
