As far as I know for those who live in NYC metro, they ship them in enclosed train cars from SC to VPC center in NJ (Jersey City), and from there on trailers (sometimes open, sometimes closed - I've seen both as I commute by that place) to your dealership.

These are not "your car" until after you buy it from the dealer.

They are shipping THEIR property around, and if they want to ship it uncovered that is their business.

All the more reason to carefully inspect the paint and reject the car if there are any defects. (Unless you want repaint, dont take it with their promise 'to have that fixed')

Anyway, I'll be more direct than MD about the concours paint: BMW paint quality sucks, who cares if it is in an open trailer? A repaint is an upgrade to factory, IMO.

A

Typically very true. Sometimes there are exceptions, but I've seen brand new M3s with more orange peal than a 1999 Tahoe.

Thanks for the responses guys. Yup its no big deal. I just always remembered the covered "her comes your baby" white tarped trailers as a kid growing up so i wondered what happened to that delivery method.
I am not worried about it at all.

Dom

Thanks A,
Have you ever found big problems with paint or options wrong/missing when taking delivery?

Dom

Me, no. There we two minor paint defects that my wife decided were OK. Her car, whatever. Never had issues with options, but car was missing floormats, which were corrected.

Having read a few hundred 'I just picked up my X5' threads, I can recall 2, 3, 4 posts where someone was surprised... As your question anticipates, the only issues you need to be concerned with are "is this what I ordered" and "any damage"... Things that don't work will be fixed under warranty.

If there were any paint issues I was going to get fixed, I'd refuse the car until it was perfect...they'll try immensely to get you to take the car 'and just bring it back we can give you a nice loaner ' because they know once you take it, it is yours and you lose that ultimate leverage....