By Alex Dugas
Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina — July 24, 2017 — The 2017 Canadian BMW/MINI Certified Collision Repair Workshop kicked off at the BMW M Performance Center in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The invitation-only event brought together insurers, college instructors and collision specialists.
Participants were driven to BMW’s M Performance Center, an impressive facility with its very own driving school. As such, the venue has its own performance driving track, fast track, skid pads as well as an off-road course where a wide range of BMW vehicles from the nearby Spartanburg production facility are tested everyday. The location also provides an opportunity for new BMW owners to take delivery of their vehicles while enjoying a day of performance driving on the track using BMW’s M Performance vehicles and not their own personal vehicles. In addition to all of the performance driving venues, the site includes a factory-owned Certified Collision Repair Center.
This unique training event began with an introduction by Gary Lin, Certified Collision Repair Specialist at BMW Group Canada. Lin spoke at length about the event’s purpose and intentions. Primary among those were to give insurers and college instructors a factory-level look into the current state of specialized collision repair and an appreciation of performance gaps which may need to be filled.
“Here at BMW Group we strive to be as transparent as possible,” said Lin. “We want to show you how everything gets done at BMW Group from collision repairs to active safety via performance driving tests.”
Dan Doot, retired Technical Manager for BMW North America and current Certified Collison Instructor for BMW North America, then led the way with an introduction to BMW Group’s online repair resources, going over a brief history of the company’s training resources. Doot led all of the hands-on training during the five-day intensive program.
Participants had the opportunity to visit the BMW M Performance Center and were given hands-on demonstrations drawn from different modules of BMW’s collision repair training courses. Participants also had unique opportunity to test an array of vehicles on the centre tracks.
On the first day, the group was led into the Certified Collision Repair Center for live demonstrations on the fundamentals of aluminium and carbon fibre repairs. Participants were invited to test their skills on various repairs by using specialized repair tools and components.
In part, the event aims to further encourage insurers to see the merits of leveraging BMW Group Certified Collision Repair Centres. It also provided college instructors a sense of where the trade has gone and what level of training their respective colleges will need to challenge themselves to attain.
