Busy year ahead for BMW
Expanded and revitalised product range set to take back sales leadership from Mercedes-BenzBMW is around 840 sales behind Mercedes-Benz for the year so far. That's based on excluding sales of MINI and Benz's commercial-based vehicles.
But BMW aims to hold fast in the face of A-Class sales that have outstripped Benz's own ability to supply the local market, says BMW Australia MD, Phil Horton. According to the local BMW boss, there's a lot of new product due to reach the market over the next 12 months – including the company's i-brand models.
Horton, speaking during the launch of the updated Z4 sports car last week, mentioned first that the company's Compact Active Tourer would be due here within 12 months. Following that he listed off other product portfolio milestones scheduled for the coming year.
"Now we get the new coupe coming – obviously the 4 Series..." he continued. "By coming I mean coming to market. That will be in the last quarter. That's a really big car for us... the 4 Series coupe.
"F15, which is code... for new X5, [will be] massive for us. The first two generations of X5 have been phenomenal for BMW. It's our biggest seller after 3 Series, and even this year it's still led that whole segment against newer competition from Mercedes.
"1 Series coupe is moving towards the end of its life, there'll be a replacement for that; we get the M3, we get the M4 next year.
"And the biggest news, which is not a volume thing, but we are genuinely excited about is obviously the i cars. So we are taking i cars here in Australia, as we've said before; i3 should be with us the middle of the year – probably the start of the third quarter. And hopefully we will be able to get at least a handful of i8s – the supercar – by the end of the year.
"The volumes we're talking about there – because this market is clearly not tuned in like some other markets to zero-emissions cars – but it is a massive, massive thing for the company. We genuinely believe that the cars are so good that... they'll punch really well above their weight in terms of image, of BMW [and] particularly on the innovation side of the business.
"They're really convincing motor cars..."
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