BMW Drivers Club Melbourne

BMW Drivers Club Melbourne Nationals Report 23- 27th April 2025

30 Apr 2025 10:45 AM | Anonymous

The BMW Clubs Australia Nationals 2025 were held in Melbourne, hosted by BMW Drivers Club Melbourne, over the ANZAC Day long Weekend in April.

Check out our photo link to see some of the amazing photos taken over the weekend.

It was so good to welcome all our national friends to our event and all over the weekend there were lots of smiles from all who attended.

The event started on Thursday with “Registration and Check In” at WestWaters, and those who registered using the ‘Nationals Package’ received some great gifts which were placed in their hotel rooms before they even arrived.

Thursday evening, we all met in the foyer to be transported by coach to Melbourne BMW for what was an outstanding cocktail night with presentations from Brendon of BMW Group Australia and Daniel of ASG, owners of Melbourne BMW.

Thank you to the team at Melbourne BMW for putting on such an amazing event as our opening night and thank you to Ross from Cellabrations Cellars for supplying the drinks.

Our Club Treasurer and Car Display aficionado, Lawrence Glynn, set up an amazing display of 3 series with a car from each of the 7 generations and had prepared some information sheets for each car, two informative “50 Years” pull up banners and two flags to match the theme. Club member Tim Wise spent quite some time and effort carefully applying our “50 Years of 3 Series” windscreen banners. The total effect looked amazing, and I am sure everyone who attended were just as thrilled with how they all looked.

It was a great night for members to informally catch up with their friends from other states and meet new friends throughout the night.

Once the event had finished our members went back onto the coaches and were safely taken back to our WestWaters accommodation for a well-deserved sleep, as quite a few of our guests had been driving for several days to be with us.

Friday morning, ANZAC Day, was forecast to be a bit wet but when we woke the sky was clear and it was quite warm and still. It was the first dawn service in Australia that we can remember which was actually quite warm. It was lovely to see so many young people attending too and so many of our members were up early to show their respect.

As a club, we arranged for and laid a wreath to remember those fallen.

After the service the RSL did a gun fire breakfast BBQ, which was brilliant and then some Two Up which I must admit I have never played, but it looked like a lot of fun. Again, great to see so many BMW Club members from all over the country attending this, with all the proceeds going to the RSL.

Friday, we also had 2 guided drives, which were very popular, both using the TourBoss navigation app, but with a comprehensive road book as a backup. One was a half day drive, leaving time for the all-important Show and Shine preparation and the other was a full day drive. Both covered some beautifully scenic and enjoyable driving roads using routes devised by Club Secretary and Drive Coordinator, Peter Williams.

Friday Night was our 70’s themed night. A lot of fun retro costumes and the inter-active Trivia Quiz was brilliant, rewarding both accuracy and speed. So proud that 99% attending made the effort to dress up and all had lots of fun. Makes the hard work behind these events worth it to see attendees appreciate our hard work and join in. I thank our team of workers who dressed the room Disco style to make the atmosphere even better.

Saturday was the big day at Calder and sadly the weather did not stay nice for us. Some drizzle which then turned to light rain with brief bursts of heavy rain. You can’t plan the weather, but it was still a fantastic day.

The rain did not dampen our officials or members spirits, who all showed up, and an amazing day was had by all. With the Show and Shine, Car Display featuring 50 years of the 3 Series, and Sprints all in one location and the addition of some great stalls and trade stands made for a real carnival atmosphere.

We were also joined by a large group from the BMW Motorcycle Club of Victoria, who put on a display of BMW Motorbikes in celebration of their Club’s 50^th anniversary. Great seeing the bikes come out on the day, even in the inclement conditions.

Thank you to all who attended and made it such and amazing day. We are very proud of our officials who stood out in the weather and did not falter all day.

We are very lucky to have a great association with the Victorian Flag-Marshalling Team, and they are all very professional in their approach to officiating. Our senior motorsport officials are all Motorsport Australia accredited and do a fantastic job. Did you see the amazing M3 Competition Touring we had as our Course Car? Wow just Wow, what an amazing car to drive. Thank you so much to BMW Group Australia for your support of the Nationals and loaning the amazing M3 to us, again.

Saturday night was our presentation Dinner with special guest Speaker Bruce Stewart from club sponsor, WAUR (Walkinshaw Andretti United Racing)

Wow I knew Bruce was good, but his presentation was so powerful and made us all feel inspired to get up and achieve our goals. Great presentation, thank you Bruce.

After that I did feel a little sorry for our second guest speaker, Professor Tony Walker from the Prostate Cancer Foundation, who had to follow with his presentation. He also gave an inspiring presentation which I think touched home to quite a few in the audience. Thank you to both these busy gentlemen for giving their time to make our night better.

Silent Auctions and raffles on the night raised $3130.30 which went to the Prostate Cancer Foundation. Thank you all for giving so generously and thank you to our Sponsors who helped this night by donating gifts for us to Auction.

Each table had a 1:18 model 3 series, to keep in the theme of 50 years of the 3 series, which were also part of the silent auction. These all went on the night, with some grabbing great bargains.

At each Nationals an award is made to the “Club of the Nationals”. Previously this has been on a points system calculated from the number of members from a club, the number of events attended per member of that club and the distance from the club’s base to the Nationals. This is designed to reward the effort a club has made to attend.

This time we adjusted the formula to use the fraction of the club membership attending, rather that the raw number of members. We feel this more fairly represents the effort a club getting, say, 20 members to the Nationals, which represents, say, 10% of their membership deserves more reward than if it presents 2% of the membership.

The results were:

Club Distance Attendees Size Num of Events = Score

BMWCCV 30 23 948 40 1.27

BMWDCM 97 116 826 327 38.40

BMWDCNSW 875 20 1118 113 88.44

BMWCCC 661 12 297 42 93.47

BMWDCSA 704 19 557 124 156.73

BMWCCWA 3307 1 132 8 200.42

BMWCCQLD 1774 19 518 132 452.06

BMWCCGC 1710 5 69 28 693.91

On that basis BMW Car Club Gold Coast won the 2025 award.

Sunday morning saw us at our farewell breakfast, spending the last few hours with our old and new friends before they headed back to their homes or off on some more travels around Victoria.

There were a few groups who joined our guided drives back to the boarders, which we again used the TourBoss app for safe and accurate navigation.

We are very proud to be the first BMW Clubs Australia Nationals for many years who have had representation from all of the BMW Clubs Australia affiliated Car Clubs attend. This was a huge effort from all attending clubs, and we would like to thank you all for promoting our event and making the trip to our great state to enjoy everything we all love about BMW.

We are nearly finished our financial report which is looking great. Our aim for this event was not to worry about making a loss or profit but to ensure the enjoyment of all who attended. We think we are going to make this event just about a break-even Nationals, and we are very proud of our team for achieving this. Everything we did over the weekend was to make our attending members experience a joyful one and we think we achieved that.

As for a great team, ours was amazing, some only coming on in the last week, which really counted, and others working tirelessly for the past 18 months to make this event as successful as it was. We will not name you all as we are bound to forget someone, but you know who you are, and we both thank you all from the bottom of our hearts.

We were pleased to welcome many non-club members and even a few non-BMW owners to some parts of the weekend. We see this as an important way to expose the BMW Club movement and the BMW range of vehicles to new audiences. Welcome to all the new members joining us either through the Nationals or wherever you have found us.

For all updates on the winners of Show and Shine/Super Sprints please go here.

To BMW Drivers Club NSW, who will be hosting the 2027 Nationals, we would like to congratulate you on your presentation and wish you all the best with your preparations for the next BMW Clubs Australia Nationals.

Lastly, we acknowledge and thank our Sponsors for their help in making this great event possible:

BMW Group Australia

BMW Clubs Australia

Calder Park

Mercure Hotel - WestWaters

Shannon's Insurance

Melbourne BMW

Bell Motorsport

Southern BM

Cellarbrations at Clarinda Cellars

Sirene Sea Pearls

Sonax Australia