Quote:
Originally Posted by Law
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.
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If BMW can keep sales within the BMW marque, that's fine and that's what you want. The problem with GM and the various brands is you had to keep profits up for each entity. That didn't happen. Saturn, Hummer, Pontiac all suffered because there were similar cars outside of those companies. While it may look good for GM as a whole (profit stays under the corporation), the financials for those companies suffered, eventually leading to shutting down those operations.
BMW on the other hand, even if they're competing with each other, BMW can only profit. Before the Gran Coupe, the 3er got 100% of the sales. Now it could be 2:1 and maybe even 1:2 3er to 4er GC. BMW just lost 3er sales, but they just easily made a profit on the same car that had a premium and retained all that profit under the BMW marque. There's almost no loss for BMW doing what they're doing.
Every company has their ups and downs, so let's not over exaggerate and blame all these models when BMW has a slow month. What is happening is one of two things:
1. BMW captures customers with these derivative models while retaining their core customer (3, 5, 7er).
2. BMW sees a dip in their core line up but sees in increase in their derivative cars.
Both scenarios only benefit BMW. The only people who care are those who see that the 3er lost some sales and think its the end of the world because BMWs bread/butter had a decrease, but in reality, all they did was move over to the 4er Gran Coupe and paid a premium for essentially the same car.