BMW has confirmed it is making available for sale the fleet of over 3,000 cars it provided for use during the London 2012 Olympic Games.  
The cars will obviously be billed as having had one careful owner and will be very low mileage. The sheer number involved is a reminder of the scale of the operation that London 2012 was and also of the issues of ‘wastage’ that can apply after such a huge one off event.
The cars will be made available for sale initially to the 70,000 volunteers who had benn part of the Gamesmaker cohort, employees of BMW and the London Organising Committee and to selected corporate partners within the Olympic ‘family’.
The cars will be stripped of their Olympic branding before sale though it is likely some form of special edition branding will be applied.
In 2011 BMW sold 166,780 cars in the UK so while the number of Olympic vehicles is signigicant it represents less than the increase in number of cars sold from 2010 to 2011 and did serve as a very visible physical presence throughout the games.
One of the most talked about sponsor elements in the Olympic Stadium was the use of miniature Mini vehicle to ferry back hammers, javelins and shot putts in the field events.
A major part of the support offered by auto manufacturers in Irish sport remains the provision of branded vehicles to stars.  Renault are one of the main partners to Paralympics Ireland and to Dublin GAA while Volkswagen are the largest sector sponsor of sport here with soccer relationships with the FAI, Shamrock Rovers and Sligo Rovers as well as with the IRFU and in Irish Golf.
BMW themselves are involved in sailing and Volvo activated its global support of the Round the World Yacht race when it landed in Galway earlier this year.
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