rodybmw

Generally speaking all this model year stuff is used mainly in the US, mostly for marketing reasons......in Europe they just go by the car's production date.

In the US BMW normally has used the standard September production time frame as the model year changeover and has only used the Spring/mid year model year changeovers for entirely new model introductions (unless the the new model was to begin production close to the standard Sep. time frame anyways). There have been many BMW models that have debuted in the US in the Spring and have been called next year's model and ran an 18 month model year. After that they have gone into a normal life cycle of changing model years with Sep. production.

However, with the E60 BMW AG has changed some major things three years in a row starting with March production, and BMW NA has used that production date as the start of next years model year. I guess that is a marketing tool many car companies use in the US. However, this March production MY changeover is not set in stone because BMW NA can't change model years in March if BMW AG does not change anything at that time. Remember when the 6 cylinder E60's changed to "2006" when they got the new engines in Spring of 2005, but the V8 stayed as a 2005 model until Sep. 2005 production when the 550 came out?

So I would expect BMW NA to go back to the Sep. production model year changeover for the E60 as well and continue the 2008 MY until Sep. 2008 production at which point they will changeover to MY 2009. That is if BMW AG does not make any more changes in Spring 2008.

So the question is are the March production changes 3 years in a row for the E60 by BMW AG just a coincidence, or has BMW AG decided to spread out changes to the different model BMW's to different times of the year instead of all in Sep. to make it easier to manage? If it's the latter then the Spring changes for the E60 might continue, but I don't think that will be the case.