Quote:
Originally Posted by r3dbimmer89
I have thought long and hard about this because I too thought BMW was going in the direction of GM back in the 90s but the difference between GM and BMW is that GM had too many overlapping brands with mediocre badge engineering. A Pontiac Grand Am was almost identical to an Oldsmobile Alero with the same exact customer base. BMW on the other hand is filling a bunch of niche segments with vehicles under just three brands, BMW, Mini, and Rolls-Royce. There is very little overlap being that these brands are all so unique in what they offer. Underneath, the UKL platforms covers both Mini and BMW but attract two totally different customer base. This is why BMW's approach is unique and far different from GM's approach. Besides, BMW is 30 times smaller than what GM was so this is merely to stay as profitable as possible and to not be taken over by a larger firm. From Business 101, we all learned that in order for a company to stay profitable...yearly growth is needed....
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See, here's the thing though...while BMW's strategy is not (yet) the full-fledged badge engineering of GM such that Mini, Rolls, and BMW cars are still differentiated.
But within the BMW marque itself, the cars overlap in price and customer base, with very minuscule differences. For example, the 328i sedan and the 428i GranCoupe sound like different cars and are advertised as different models, but really, they are one and the same & fulfill the same purpose: a Compact Executive/D-segment vehicle.