Spartanburg, SC - October 10, 2002 The Museum is off Rt-101 off Exit 60 of I-85. We pulled into the parking lot of the museum and saw a Z4 BMW sports car in the lot that was quite impressive. The Zentrum (center in German) is a museum that is free to go through. This museum housing BMW’s from the first ones built in 1917 to ones of today. 007’s light blue Z8 BMW is displayed as will as BMW’s race cars, engines, BMW motor cycles and of course the story of BMW. We found out the Z3 has been discontinued and the new Z4 is the newest model on the market next year. They are making 80 cars a day to ship out to the dealers now and the price tag will be around $35,000 to $37,000. We saw three of the Z4’s in the parking lot. I thought maybe they wouldn’t allow cameras in the plant so I asked; I was right, the girl told me they would confiscate all cameras until after the tour. I took mine back to the car and locked it up there. We viewed a short film on the BMW that took us through the assembly process as if you were a car; very interesting. Our tour took us through the plant and saw BMW’s in all stages of assembly. Workers do most of the assembly but robots do the main welding of the body; they were neat to watch. At one spot, sparks from one of them actually hit a few people. They assemble eight hundred cars a day. All throughout the assembly process, the car body is transported from station to station by lifts that adjust to the height of the workers. We watched as a car was put through a driving test getting up to 131 mph. I’d hate to see what would happen if it got loose. The tour lasted one hour & 15 minutes.