The 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London are almost upon us, which means we're just about ready to start following the torch on its trek through Europe en route to the opening ceremonies.  That torch travels on a tight schedule, which means even awful weather can't be allowed to stand in the way of this Olympic symbol making its way to that opening night of these games.

If only there were some way to test all these conditions to make sure the torch would be able to hold up in these hypothetically torrential downpours and hypothetically gale-force winds.  But the Olympics can't build a multi-million dollar facility to perform those tests.  It's just not in the budget.

The Olympics can't, but BMW certainly can.  If anybody on the planet would have a wind tunnel facility advanced enough to test tough weather conditions, it'd be an automaker, and since BMW is one of the main official sponsors of this year's games, it makes sense that they'd be the ones to offer up their building.  Hey, if we here at Center BMW had a wind tunnel behind our building, we'd let the Olympics use it.  We don't, though, so we'll leave it up to the BMW folks in Munich to tackle that one.

In Los Angeles, BMW X5, X6, and X3 vehicles don't necessarily go through the kinds of weather issues the torch will see in Europe, but luckily for the bearers of that thing, BMW was able to prepare these runners for everything.  Now, the tests are over, and we're all ready to see this thing run for real.