Alfardan Automobiles’ exclusive BMW showcase at Milipol Qatar 2024
At Milipol Qatar 2024, visitors to the show can discover some of BMW’s latest innovations on the Alfardan Automobiles stand
Alfardan Group has established itself as one of the leading family-owned conglomerates in the region, and Alfardan Automobiles is the exclusive importer of BMW in Qatar. Milipol Daily spoke with Christophe Gontard, BMW Protection Vehicles, Special Sales, and Torsten Löhner, BMW Motorrad, Worldwide Special Sales, in an exclusive interview about the innovative and unique nature of their products.
What are the main innovations you are presenting here at Milipol Qatar?
Christophe Gontard: What we have brought here today is the BMW 7 Protection. It only came out last year. It’s a BMW factory-made armoured vehicle. It comes in a certification level VR9, which is a vehicle resistance level 9, with an upgrade to 10 on the transparent area, because if somebody should attack you and shoot at you, snipers will always shoot at what they can see. So the transparent area is a bit heftier. We are here at Milipol to show it to Qatari governmental institutions.
Can you share a bit more about what makes the car so unique?
CG: Normally, when you build an armoured vehicle, you take a naked car, so the skeleton, and then you plate it where necessary. With this car it’s different. We’ve changed this principle by making one passenger cell out of German tank steel, on average 11 millimetres thick, and the rest of the car gets attached to it. So this gives us two great advantages over our competitors: the reduction of weight, which makes it much easier to drive, and it’s faster, it goes from 0 to 100 in 6.6 seconds, even though it’s an armoured vehicle of almost the highest class, for the civilian type.
In the best of all cases, 100% of the time you use this car as your daily car. The thing with armored vehicles is that the armouring has to go somewhere. The outside dimensions of the car don’t change because you want to be invisible in traffic, it has to look like a normal car. If you have to plate up armouring, it will make it much smaller on the inside. Then you end up with a big limousine, but it feels like a small car on the inside. With this construction, we’ve made a huge leap in how this car is built. It makes it lighter, and more spacious, and it feels almost like a normal 7 Series.
Can you tell us about the BMW Motorrad products being presented at Milipol Qatar?
Torsten Löhner: Here at Milipol Qatar, we have a world premiere of a brand new bike, the R 1300 GS in the authority version. We are presenting our complete GS family, beginning from the smallest, the 800 GS, then the 900 GS and the 1300 GS in the authority version. For us it is very important to be here in the Middle East sector because the authority bikes are able to escort all different kinds of duties, including police duty, presidential escorts or ministry escorts. This is a main advantage of the BMW group because we have on the one side the armoured car for high-ranking ministers or presidents, and we have the bikes to escort them. This is unique in the automotive sector
So you offer a kind of a package deal?
TL: Absolutely. At BMW Motorrad we are are a so-called system provider. We don’t just provide the motorbikes, we provide the rider equipment, the technical training and driver training. So our clients get the full package directly from BMW Motorrad and this is unique.
BMW Motorrad is also the only supplier worldwide with a separate development department at the headquarters in Munich for the authority bikes and in our plant in Berlin we have a separate production line only for police motorcycles which means the bikes come ex-factory completely equipped in the police version. Our bikes are completely tested and homologated.
Can you tell us a little bit about the relationship between BMW and Alfardan?
TL: BMW Motorrad and Alfardan have a very long-term relationship. I’ve been doing this business now for 25 years and for 25 years I’ve always been in contact with Alfardan. Alfardan has a special relationship and position here in Qatar. But you don’t do business only because of your position, you do it also because of the quality of the product.