THE BMW and Mini service team at Harwoods Basingstoke went up a gear in driving up customer awareness by holding a special event.

The team at the service centre in Edison Road, Houndmills, met around 80 people who popped in last Saturday to find out more about what Harwoods offers for BMW and Mini drivers, with people coming from as far away as Andover, Oxford and Southampton.

Service manager Chris Power said: “The day was a big success. The whole idea was to raise awareness about Harwoods BMW and it certainly did that.

“We had people who live less than five minutes away from us here, and they didn’t even know we existed.

“It was a fantastic way to promote the business and was a great opportunity for the customers to come and meet the team, have a chat, enjoy a coffee and have a free vehicle health check, and to top it all get the car washed.

“We shall definitely be running more events like this in the near future.”

Chris and his colleagues spent the day answering questions and showing people around the centre’s workshop.

“The best thing about it was that 80 per cent of the people who came were not on our database, and they will hopefully use us for all their BMW and Mini servicing requirements,” said Chris.