My BMW: ALAN KELLY
"The little touches BMW do are great. They'll do regular surveys, they'll ring you up and ask how you're getting on, are you happy, is everything okay?"
As the physio for several Leinster rugby sides and All-Ireland GAA teams, Alan Kelly’s job is to keep players in tip-top shape so they can play like a well-oiled machine. And he likes his cars to be in top condition too, which is why he’s been driving BMWs for the best part of 30 years.
Kelly owns and runs the Old Bawn Clinic in Tallaght, and golfer Padraig Harrington is one of many top sports personalities who have paid tribute to Kelly’s “magic hands”. When he is travelling to and from work, or to a big sporting event, those hands like nothing better than to be holding the wheel of a BMW.
When did you buy your first BMW and what model was it? My first BMW was a silver metallic 323 bought in early 1981. That was the start of my love-in with BMW. I foolishly drifted away for a while, but I came back, and please God they'll see me home, as the man said.
What's your current model of BMW and when did you buy it? I've got a BMW 430 Grande Coupé, Black Sapphire, only 3,500 miles on it, and it's just magnificent. I bought it last October on the PCP (Personal Contract Purchase). Everybody can have a BMW now under the PCP purchase plan. We have a huge swing now to usership rather than ownership. More people are getting new cars under the PCP, and you get to use the car for three years, so why wouldn't you get a new BMW? And people are speccing them up as well because it's financed through the car finance company, and they're guaranteeing the future value of the car.
Why do you choose BMW? The BMW is a driver's car. It's solid, it's reliable, it's very well built. It's just a lovely car and I've been very lucky. All cars give trouble. All cars have to be serviced. When it came to the BMW, for me it was reliability. For me the number one thing is reliability.
What do you do to keep your BMW in good nick? I wash and clean it regularly. I'm a low mileage kind of guy – I don't do huge mileage. The first service is usually 10,000 miles, but I'll have only done 6,000 or 7,000, so there'll probably be very little to be done. It's very cheap to drive – only €280 tax a year and 50 miles to the gallon.
How does aftersales service help you? I'm not a techie, I never was a techie, and there's so much technology on my BMW that I'll never use, but if I need to know, I'll go to my dealersip, and they'll sit in the car and speak to me properly. Whether it's left, right, up, down, whatever, in proper layman's language, not jargon. The little touches they do are great. They'll do regular surveys, they'll ring you and ask how you're getting on, are you happy, is everything okay?
What happens when you bring your car in for repair? There's a lovely friendly atmosphere there. In the old days, you'd go into a garage, smell the diesel, petrol and fumes, and the fellas were all oily rags, and down in pits, getting really dirty. You were wondering if you'd get anything done at all.
Now, all the cars are computerised, and you can see the log and the computer tells you everything. So you have to have a 21st century workshop. You can sit there and have a cup of coffee and a piece of cake and read the paper. And the car will be done, it’ll be handed back to you perfectly clean. It’s civilised, there’s no smell of petrol or fumes and oil, and it’s just very nicely done. They’re very affable, they’ll meet you, and nothing is ever too much trouble no matter what it is. You’ll get the courtesy car, you’ll get home, your car will be done.
MY BMW: PHILLIP HARDY
“I adore even just getting into the cars. My children are following in my footsteps. My 23-year-old son has just bought his first BMW”
Dentist Philip Hardy commutes from his home in Greystones to the Dublin Dental University Hospital, where he teaches, but he leaves his BMW 435 D M4 X-Drive at home. Instead, he jumps onto his BMW R1200 GS motorbike, zooms past the traffic jams, and is in his surgery within 35 minutes of leaving the house. Every year, though, both car and bike would be used to go on holiday to Europe. “My wife and I are planning a bike trip to Slovenia at the moment,” he says.
So far he’s owned 12 bikes and 15 cars, most of them BMWs. “I absolutely adore even just getting into the cars. So I would have nailed my colours to the mast at an early stage. And my children are following in my footsteps. My 23-year-old son has just bought his first BMW 320.”
What was your first BMW? It was a 1982 316i, which I bought in 1982. I still remember the reg number. At the time I was going back to college having worked a few years, and I remember parking my new BMW at the Swan Centre in Rathmines to go in and repeat my Leaving Cert. I felt like I'd arrived.
What made you keep coming back to BMWs? I always loved the feel of the car and the ambience inside the car, even in those days it had a lovely feel to it and that's what attracted me to it. And the tight feel of the drive is also very good. Every other car feels plastic in comparison.
What's your current model? It's a 435 D M4 X-Drive. It's the biggest engine, and it's a lively machine. And my bike is an R1200 GS, very reliable, it will never let you down. I've had four of them in a row so far. Again, it's the feel of the switchgear, the ABS, traction control – all the things you used to have on cars you have on bikes now. They even have a cornering ABS, where you can brake in the middle of cornering and it still takes control of everything.
What do you mostly use your BMW car for? I use it mostly for pleasure, because I just find the traffic crazy. When we're going off to the west for a holiday I'd obviously bring the car for that. And I would often do a foreign trip in the car. I love driving in Europe.
How do you look after your BMW? I do all the care of it myself in terms of washing it – I would never let anyone else wash it. And I'm the kind of person who'll park my car in places where it's less likely to get damaged. I usually buy the BMW service pack when I buy the car. So you buy a five-year service pack, so you can bring it back to the dealer any time it needs a service over the five years. I've done that for the last several cars I've bought. I normally don't keep a car longer than a couple of years. Change it before it goes out of warranty, so you've no expenses.
How important is aftersales service? It's excellent. They ring you every now and then, for no particular reason, just to see that everything is okay, are you enjoying your car. I found it very helpful when I was buying this car, because the 4 series is quite new, and they were great for giving me all the specifications. BMW invited us out to Mondello for a track day, which was really nice. And they gave me the M4 to do a few laps of the track. Unfortunately it rained, but it was great. I went to the Nurburgring for five years in a row on my bike, the old Nordschleife, the long track (20km). And that's just an experience to savour.
Finally, what makes BMW a cut above the rest? I think the feel of the car, the tightness, and the feeling that the car is properly made. And the sense of quality inside the car. Quality and feel, those would be the two main things. It's a real driver's car.
My BMW: DAVID TURNER
“I drive my car the way I drive my motorcycle: to get enjoyment out of it. And BMW gives me the enjoyment”
David Turner doesn’t have to worry about doing the daily commute, as he works from his home in Dún Laoghaire. But his job as a surveyor takes him all around the greater Dublin area on site visits, and he finds his BMW 4-series does the job nicely. “It’s very efficient around town, and it has different modes – sports mode and economy mode – so you go around the city using economy mode, then use sports mode if you’re on the motorway and you need to overtake a lorry.”
Turner has been a BMW buyer for nearly 20 years, and has owned seven or eight of them in that time. Turner is also a keen motorcyclist, and when he bought his latest BMW car, he went for a model that gave him a feeling of freedom on the open road.
“I’m currently driving a Metallic Silver 428 (above). I got it in February. I’ve always had 5 Series BMWs, and I just felt I wanted to get something a little smaller, and the 4 Series had just come in. I wanted something with a bit of interest in it, and I wasn’t ready for a big, lumbering beast. And a 428 is nice and compact yet not too small.”
What was your first BMW? My first was a 520 which I went over to England to buy. The quality of cars in the mid- to late 1990s was much better in England. The range was much better. I had to pay the import duty on it, but it still worked out cheaper than actually buying it here in Ireland. That was the start of the journey.
What keeps you coming back to BMW? I suppose familiarity is one. I know the way the cars handle. But I've only had one BMW that's given me trouble, and that was about 10 years ago. But BMW looked after me extremely well. They replaced all kinds of bits and pieces. A lot of people might have said after that, well, I'm not going back to BMW again, but I saw that the quality of the car is such that it shouldn't happen again, and it never happened again.
What do you mostly use your BMW for? I do a lot of continental driving, quite a lot in France, and it's a wonderful car for long distances. Comfort is very important, being able to drive for five hours non-stop on the motorways. We also drive down to west Cork a lot. Again, it's three hours down on a motorway with no rest stops on it, so it's important to be comfortable, and the BMW delivers on that.
How important is aftersales service to you? The back-up service is probably the most important thing. If something does happen, you go in and the personal contact – in everything I do, be it insurance, be it with the bank to have that point of contact, that person you can ring up and say, look, can you do this for me, and I find that is always ready.
In a lot of places the sales manager, once they’ve sold you the cars, they’re not really interested in you. That’s not the case with my dealer. He’ll pick up the phone and say, how are you, everything going well with the car? Any problems with it? That’s invaluable. They keep in regular contact with me, and I get emails, and informed of events that I may be interested in.
What makes BMW a cut above the rest? The range of models. There's an incredible range of models in the BMWs, and for somebody who's interested in cars – and I'm very interested in cars – I like to be able to choose my car and choose from the various options that they offer you. And they have a huge range of options, from heated rear seat to upgrading your satellite navigation. The BMW configuration programme is really good, in that it effectively allows you to build your own car from your desktop.
“And they’re such a joy to drive. I drive my car slightly the way I drive my motorcycle: I get enjoyment out of it. And BMW gives me the enjoyment.”
