UPDATE (1230 Fri 20 Oct) -- Here is some more of the very nice ink about the M6 now appearing all over the world.

Christmas will come early for 50 North American Neiman Marcus customers who managed to place their calls into BMW to order the new 2007 BMW M6 Convertible that was featured in this year's Neiman Marcus Christmas Book, as it went on sale yesterday at 12:00 p.m.

As the clock struck noon, the phone lines were jammed with buyers who wanted to be sure they were among the first in the U.S. to own the just-introduced Limited Edition M6. The 50 Convertibles sold out in a mere one minute, thirty-two seconds.

Full story

Not only is the Allianz Cup taking place in San Francisco the week after next. "Oracle World" -- a huge annual convention of Oracle Corp staff, partners, suppliers, vendors, you name it -- is on then as well. There's a nice article in today's SF Chronicle about this up-coming mega-event....


Oracle stops traffic with convention
Meredith May, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, October 14, 2006

Not many companies can get permission to shut down part of a city street for eight days for a convention.

Then again, it's hard to top Redwood City database giant Oracle Corp., which is promising to bring 41,000 people and 500 temporary jobs and inject $50 million into the local economy during Oracle OpenWorld 2006 at the Moscone Center Oct. 22-26.

Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison is a keynote speaker, along with the leaders of Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Cisco Systems and Sun Microsystems.

Oracle-ites have already reserved virtually every hotel room in San Francisco during the week - 65,000 hotel stays -- said Jennifer Petrucione, Mayor Gavin Newsom's spokeswoman. Conventioneers will take over all three wings of the Moscone Center, every downtown hotel ballroom, and the open areas in front of Yerba Buena Gardens and the Metreon. Sir Elton John is flying in to perform for the crowds at the Cow Palace.

Full story

Talk about nice ink! An excerpt from a story filed under "innovation" in the 16 October issue of BusinessWeek magazine, with the subhead, "Sharing the wealth, listening to even the lowest-ranking workers, and rewarding risk have paid off big time."

Although BMW, with $59.2 billion in sales last year, is much smaller than its American rivals, the U.S. auto giants could still learn a thing or two from the Bavarians. Detroit's rigid and bloated bureaucracies are slow to respond to competitive threats and market trends, while BMW's management structure is flat, flexible, entrepreneurial -- and fast. That explains why, at the very moment GM and Ford appear to be in free fall, BMW is more robust than ever. The company has become the industry benchmark for high-performance premium cars, customized production, and savvy brand management, making it the envy of Mercedes-Benz (DCX ), Audi, and Lexus and the subject of Harvard Business School case studies. Even mighty Toyota Motor Corp. (TM ) regularly dispatches engineers to BMW's factories to see how the company cranks out 1.3 million customized cars a year.

Few companies have been as consistent at producing an ever-changing product line, with near-flawless quality, that consumers crave. BMW has redefined luxury design with its 7 Series, created a mania for its Mini, and maintained some of the widest margins in the industry. A sporty four-wheel-drive coupe and a svelte minivan called the Luxury Sport Cruiser are slated to roll off the production line in 2008. Those models promise to continue BMW's run of cool cars under its new chief executive, Norbert Reithofer, who took over in September. (His predecessor, Helmut Panke, stepped down upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 60.) Says Reithofer: "We push change through the organization to ensure its strength. There are always better solutions."

Full story

Nice ink for our official clothing partner, Henri Lloyd, playing on websites around the world this week....


Through Henri Lloyd’s ongoing testing and development program with the BMW ORACLE Racing Team has resulted in the need for stretchy, durable and highly breathable clothing. This has led to the introduction of the Octane Range of products, which are now available to buy at retail.

This set of clothing which consists of a jacket, vest and shorts, uses the highly breathable S3 Soft Shell Technology. The Soft Shell material is a soft, high stretch woven fabric which has been combined with a Super DWR coating embedded which results in a highly water resistant product which also cuts out 95% of wind. The double faced Soft Shell fabrics are constructed with nylon on the face to enhance abrasion resistance and with polyester on the back to help wick moisture away from the skin keeping the wearer dryer on the inside.

Additional features include Riri Aqua zips which have been used throughout the products to provide water resistant openings. While the Octane Shorts benefit from the use of breathable Schoeller Keprotec fabric on the seat for extra reinforcement and protection from deck abrasion.

From a story by Greg Levine on the Forbes website entitled, "Ellison's Oracle Beats Expectations":

It takes money to make money. And Oracle (nasdaq: ORCL - news - people ) has done just that, posting first-quarter results Tuesday that outpaced Wall Street's expectations. The information technology company posted a fiscal first-quarter net income that rose to $670 million, or 13 cents per share, as compared to $519 million, or 10 cents per share, in the year-ago period.

Full story

Congrats to the team from the London law firm Allen & Overy LLP (Canary Wharf office) for winning the BMW City Challenge. The Yachting World website has the full story.

Nice ink for BMW in today's New York Times:

BMW's Custom-Made University

CLEMSON, S.C. — When Clemson University received $10 million from the German automaker BMW in 2002, the money helped jump-start a $1.5 billion automotive research and educational center. It also led to a partnership that both the automaker and the university acknowledge has grown extraordinarily close.

In return for the largest cash donation ever received by the school, Clemson gave the company some unusual privileges, including a hand in developing a course of study. Clemson’s president drives a silver BMW X5 sport utility vehicle, compliments of BMW, whose only North American plant is 50 miles away.

At Clemson’s urging, BMW in large part created the curriculum for an automotive graduate engineering school. The company also drew up profiles of its ideal students; it gave Clemson, a state-supported university, a list of professors and specialists to interview, and even had approval rights over the school’s architectural look.

Through its new school and unusual partnership with BMW, Clemson becomes the first university in the nation to offer a doctoral degree in automotive engineering.

Full story (registration required, but free of charge).

BMW ORACLE Racing official supplier of consultancy services, Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, had their "Roland Berger Challenge Club" meeting here in Valencia at our team base last week. Participating were 40 hard-working but amiable consultants and project managers from all over the world (14 countries).

The Challenge Club concept is to intensify the development of the company's most talented people. Each year they meet twice for two to three days at an interesting location. On Friday, as a team building exercise, they raced Beneteau First 7.5's from the fleet maintained here in VLC by the Sailing Team.

Sven Breipohl, head of HR for Roland Berger, was here as well. During their meetings Marcus Berret was introduced as the new head of the Challenge Club previously managed by Stefan Boetzel.

Here's a brief video slide show of the excellent session the Roland Berger group had out on the water last Friday....


Everyone wins in a team-building exercise like this.