[HighlandPete]

Do we sense BMW are to head in a slightly different direction?

Comments from Ian Robertson.

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/in...tant-car-sales

They may have already killed the residuals with the big discounts. If so, hard to turn back.

[Tengocity]

I'm not sure, part of me thinks it's excuses for losing ground to Mercedes, though BMW over the last 10+ years seem to have got pretty ruthless over only doing models with clearly profitable business cases. Other than the investment in the i range, which will not see profit for a few years I expect, everything else does talk to volume in pursuit of profit. They've never gone for the halo models like Audi and Mercedes have done (R8, SLS), as the volumes make it hard to justify a profit, instead going for decent volume niche filling with boring stuff like the 2AT, multiple versions of 3 series, and matrioshka doll X cars.

They're clearly a well managed company in terms of all the financial stuff that shareholders/investors look for, but I fear they're slowly losing who BMW are with this approach. So if I was optimistic I'd see a sliver of hope that they're going to revert back a bit away from the volume chasing of now, but alas, I can't see it.

More penultimate driving machine, ultimate profit machine these days....

[Edinburra]

Originally Posted by HighlandPete

Do we sense BMW are to head in a slightly different direction?

Comments from Ian Robertson.

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/in...tant-car-sales

They may have already killed the residuals with the big discounts. If so, hard to turn back.

A case of Volume vanity Profit sanity?

[JustChris]

I think they went all out for No.1 sales last year and the Pre Reg and discount slashing is catching up this Qtr maybe.