[lateshow]

Me and my wife went to Perillo BMW in downtown Chicago for the difference event yesterday. I've already ordered a fully loaded, space grey, black nevada, brushed aluminum, 309 wheels, 35i from another dealership, but I wanted to get my $500 gift card before I take delivery (hopefully) in late April.

This was also my wife's first opportunity to drive the car. We're in a 2009 Acura RDX w/ tech package right now. Although I love Honda products and we were initially impressed with this car, the 2009's and older have incredibly stiff suspensions to the point where you nearly grit your teeth every time you go over a bump. The newer RDX's are much more forgiving, but they are ugly and I've had my eyes on an X3 for years.

My wife drove first. She immediately loved it. She's not normally a car person, but she does have a respect for BMW engineering after we had one as a company car in England for 2 years. The X3 we drove was spec'd just like ours, so for the first time I was able to try out the dynamic handling package. The ride was superbly better than our RDX. Even in the sport+ mode it was more forgiving over bumps in the Chicago streets than our car. We were both extremely impressed.

The power was addictive. The only complain I have about doing a difference event downtown is there is no opportunity to really open up the car and to corner. It's not their fault and I could have gone out to the suburbs to do the drive, but I'm not really sure why they chose Perillo for that reason alone.

The people at the dealership were perfectly friendly. I was open about placing my order at another dealership and they were fine with that. I think they appreciated my honesty.

The other problem with this event is it makes it even harder to keep waiting on my car. It's killing me!

[MA78]

Originally Posted by lateshow

The people at the dealership were perfectly friendly. I was open about placing my order at another dealership and they were fine with that. I think they appreciated my honesty.

That's because the people running the event don't work for that dealership. they don't even work for BMW. They're employees of an events marketing company.
I thought they were very nice too. But they didn't seem to know much about the technical aspects of the car. Not much at all.