Feature: BMW South Korea Driving Centre

It's a bit difficult to see why BMW would invest millions in a driving centre similar to the one it already has in Munich and the US in a place such as South Korea. Especially since it's potentially a house of straw.

Until you see the numbers.

The South Korean appetite for luxury cars is growing and BMW currently sells about 50,000 cars into the country.

And we're not talking base-model 1-Series, either; no, the South Korean taste in BMWs runs to the higher end of things with a high skew towards 7-Series limousines and plenty of M-cars.

But South Korea is also seen as a central location for the rest of Asia, for which you can insert the word `China' and its hugely expanding middle-class. (Shanghai is just a 30-minute flight from Seoul.)

Opened in 2014, the South Korean BMW Driving Centre stands on a vast stretch of reclaimed land, drained and turned into useable countryside decades ago when Seoul's original airport was moved to the Incheon area about 70km west of the capital.

The odd thing is that the Seoul locals have taken the driving centre to their hearts, using the facility as a day out where the kids can attend the BMW Junior Academy (where they're taught road rules and even basic engineering), mum can attend a day-spa and dad can take a new BMW for a spin on the test track, go for a taxi-ride on the high-speed circuit or even take a training course in how to be a professional security driver.

According to the centre's senior director and the man who originally envisaged the project back in 2008, Sungtaek (call me S.T.) Jang, the South Korean habit of making fast purchasing decisions has made the driving centre a hub for actual car purchases.

"We have sales representative from the major Seoul BMW dealerships rotate through the centre, and we assume we will sell about 2000 cars per year directly from here," he said.

So while the cost of running the centre adds up to about ?4.5 million a year, with the sales figures and the estimated 430,000 visitors to the centre each year, it's actually a pretty handy profit centre as well as a means of pushing the BMW message on safety and driver training.

ST, who is part salesman, part showman and 100 per cent dedicated to the centre, told Drive that even at just three years in, the driving centre is "already planning an extension which will extend the circuit's main straight to one kilometre long and will allow speeds of 250km/h".

But here's the house of straw part; despite its phenomenal success, the centre's days are already potentially numbered.

Built at the tip of the Incheon island (which is two smaller islands joined by the reclaimed land) the location of the driving centre is right at the end of a proposed fifth runway.

At the moment, the runway doesn't exist as planes using it would have to stack over North Korean airspace, something that is simply not an option in the current political climate.

But if North and South Korea are ever re-united (and there's a sector of the South Korean population that believe this is a `when', not an `if') then the 240,000 square-metre driving centre would be demolished to allow for that crucial fifth runway.

ST believes in reunification and points out that BMW's lease on the land runs out as early as 2025.

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