Club Drive to Healesville Sanctuary
22 September 2018
It was a marvellous day for a car drive
Clear skies and big yellow sun
Twisty roads made me feel so a-live
Out of town and we’re having some fun.
We’re on a club drive, we’re going to Healesville
The straight route would take hours one
But we’re taking the back roads for some thrill
It’s the best way to get from Brighton.
And all the great feeling that you get from B M
And all the sheer pleasure you get, from them
And we just had one more car drive with you, our club.
With sincere apologies to Van Morrison’s Moondance but I couldn’t think of any better way to start the article!
Yes, this is the club drive from Brighton BMW’s highly impressive new facilities to the Healesville Sanctuary via some interesting roads, thanks to Peter William’s route plotting skills.
The new showrooms are double storey and spotlessly clean, neither of which applied to the new car dealerships of my acquaintance when I started driving in the 1970’s, so things have moved on a lot since then.
And if you are after an M-car they have a special area upstairs just for that, which is where they served us morning tea with yummy cakes etc and the now staff operated café coffee machine downstairs – no more push button automated systems, this is proper coffee.
In fact, the whole ambience is that of a very upmarket shopping mall, although not too many of those would move 100 designer items per month at $50,000+ per item. And its that sales volume which dictate a much larger delivery area which can easily hold 5 cars – the average sales being 4.25 per day!
Servicing has also had a huge upgrade with spacious well light work areas and a mixture of more traditional four post hoists and easier to work around scissor lift hoists. With the Express Lane system your car can be serviced while you wait and, if you want to, you can even watch and stand under you car in two specially designed service bays with the technician explained what they are doing and what all the bits and bobs are under there.
Suitably refreshed and impressed we headed off through the traffic to the city limits and some twisty roads. As the road opened out and climbed the views started to unfold before us and the traffic thinned, allowed for a bit of responsible spirited driving at times and an excellent opportunity to evaluate the X2 lent to Shaaron and I as part of the Royal Children’s Hospital fund raising prize from Good Friday.
And we certainly picked the right day for the drive as the weather was glorious and just the right day for fun drive enjoyed by our members..
Lawrence Glynn | Member #3
BMW Drivers Club Melbourne
