01 Nov 07
I've been putting miles on the 335d so quickly that when the service interval indicator announced that the car was due for its first visit to a dealership, I was taken completely by surprise.
I guess that, in the back of my head, I knew the car would not simply go on and on without requiring a service and, if I were more observant, I could have paid greater attention to the read-out which tells you exactly how many miles are left until the next service.
But there you have it. A little less than a year and a little more than 20,000 miles after the BMW came into my life, it was time to release it, albeit only for a few hours, into the care of someone else.
I'm always fascinated by moments like this. Not being real people, motoring journalists tend not to own cars and therefore have nothing like the experience of negotiating with car dealers than most typical drivers too. It is a subject upon which most of us are spectacularly badly placed to comment.
Even so, what interests me so much is that these days, cars are so reliable and service intervals so long, that the day a car comes in for service is probably the only opportunity a dealer has to interact with his or her customer, to cement their relationship or blow it out of the water. Poor servicing unquestionably results in lost sales and I never cease to be amazed at the number of dealers who still appear unable to grasp this elementary fact. Were I in charge of a dealer I'd make damn sure that every customer was made to feel like a long lost son or daughter so that it would never occur to him or her ever to buy a car from anyone else.
