BMW USA Cancels the European Delivery Program

By Michael Palmer - May 6, 2020

The program officially ends in September 2020, but if you order by May 18, you can still enjoy the ultimate driving machine vacation.

As an American, one of the greatest ways to buy a BMW has been to build or order your new Beemer with European Delivery. Fly to Germany. “Meet your new vehicle at the BMW Welt, a place of experience and evolution.” Drive around Europe for a couple of weeks in your brand new car. Then ship it back to the US. It’s the ultimate vacation with the ultimate driving machine.

But if you want to experience your own BMW European Delivery, you’ll need to act fast. Bimmerpost, BMWBLOG, and AutoBlog are reporting the European Delivery program will end in September 2020. More pressing, if you wish to make a reservation to build a car and/or participate, you need to submit a pre-reservation form by May 18. And, given the state of the world in 2020, it’s probably a bit of a gamble.

AutoBlog reached out to BMW for a comment, to which spokesman Oleg Satanovsky responded:

After carefully evaluating the changing BMW U.S. customer preferences towards U.S.-built X vehicles and the declining interest in the European Delivery Program, BMW has made the decision to bring the U.S. market European Delivery Program to a close in the fall of 2020.

On the flip side of the coin, while the European Delivery Program will come to a close, the BMW Performance Ultimate Delivery Experience is still going strong. Here’s what BMW said to BMWBLOG about the matter:

While fewer customers have been taking advantage of driving their new BMW’s in Europe prior to having their cars shipped to the U.S., we have seen a marked increase in interest in the BMW Ultimate Delivery Experience at our Greenville-Spartanburg facility which is available for any production BMW vehicle, not just for those built in South Carolina.

The BMW Ultimate Delivery Experience includes classroom and on-track car control instruction at the BMW Performance Center, a tour of Plant Spartanburg, a visit to the BMW Zentrum Museum and finally, a personalized vehicle handover of your new BMW followed by a drive home from the scenic Carolinas.