In a few days' time B524131 is destined to become evo's latest Fast Fleet addition, but before it arrives I've come to see how it travels from factory to showroom, and exactly what happens along the way.

The first part of the journey to the UK starts with a 24-hour train journey from the factory to the port of Cuxhaven. Four to five trains leave every day, each carrying 200 cars, made up of a mixture of 5-, 6- and 7-Series. (In Germany, trains have taken over from lorries for transport of heavy goods, following years of lobbying by the Green Party.) At Cuxhaven the cars are off-loaded and sorted onto ships to be delivered all over the world. There's one ship destined for the UK that leaves every day, each carrying around 500 BMWs at a time, and from the sticker on the steering wheel I can see B524131 undertook the 22-hour trip to the UK on the boat Tor Hollandia in load 25, position 6 (or last car on the middle deck to you and me).

On arrival at Immingham the cars are unloaded and trucked the 30 miles up the M180 to Thorne. Once there they can either be put in a holding compound (if a dealer has requested it) or join a queue to be de-waxed by the mother of all automated car washes.

B524131 looks so cool in matt black, it's a shame you can't order it in this format, but the wax has to go. The wax coating is put there to protect the fresh paint from industrial grime and the dreaded seagull poo, which I'm told can be mighty impressive in terms of its sheer quantity and paint-stripping qualities.

The 22-metre-long car wash cuts the job of removing the wax to just five minutes (rather than four hours using a pressure washer). The car gets dragged through a torture chamber of high pressure jets spewing a cleaning agent mixture heated to 80deg C. The whole area is filled with a heady mix of steam as cars emerge to be blow-dried and driven to check-stations. This is the area controlled by an army of white-coated inspectors armed with a computer, bar- code reader and an eye for detail as they scan the cars for any defects. Top of their list are paint faults like lacquer swelling, boil-up, micro blisters or 'in to out' dents. They have to look very hard to find anything though, as the defect rating is running at just 0.01%, or one in every 10,000 cars coming through Thorne.

As with every car, B524131 is also checked to see if it's carrying all the right equipment. Code 850 stands for 'Zusaetzliche Tankfeulling Expo' which means it has had a pre-determined amount of fuel added that's precisely the right amount for its trip to the UK dealer (BMW got the amount wrong with the E38 M5 apparently and the cars ran out of fuel on their journeys to dealers). Code 880 covers the English service book, together with colour-coded screws to fix the UK number plate to the car. Code 902 is a surprise though; it's labelled 'Pressewagen' and might explain why B524131 has covered 43 miles, compared with the two or three miles most of the other cars have been driven. The inspectors pass B524131 for delivery and the computer designates a parking bay. There it'll wait before being delivered.

The most amazing part of the whole operation is the sheer speed with which a car can go from the production line in Germany to a UK dealer. Beside our 645 Ci is a blue 318i that, according to its sticker, left the production line at 10.05pm just four days ago. Tonight it will be off to the dealer in London and be PDI'd (pre-delivery inspection) ready for delivery. That's just five days after being bolted together in Germany. I only wish our 645 Ci was being processed as quickly. I blame that 'Pressewagen' label...