Shebs

Guys,

I just wanted to share some thoughts with you. Is it possible that the new directions of providing more luxurious, comfortable, safer in crash tests, and easy on the eye designs actually hurt the BMW success in the recent years?

The obvious answer seems to be no. I mean all my family memebers and most of my friends and colleagues think that the BMW F10 is a very good looking car inside out and that they would like to own one (same stands for the F01). But what if the lower dynamic performance and the extra weight fire back at BMW?

In the middle of 2005, I decided to buy a car. At the time, I had an Alfa Romeo 156 2.0 Twin Spark. I was tired of some reliability problems and the Alfa being 5 years old with 140,000 Km on the dial was starting to fall apart. The Alfa service centers in my country were awful compared to those of MB, Audi, or BMW or even Jag.

So I said to myself, I have to buy a german car then. I looked at the A4, A6, C-Class, E-Class, 3 series, and 5 series.

I started, with a lot of appetie, reading on the internet and in car magazines about all these cars. Due to the superior dynamic performance of both BMWs (3 & 5) in every test I came across, I settled on buying one. Then I started looking at the 3 series versus the 5 series. Then I was 25 years old so I would have gone with the new 3 series, but due to the minimal difference in weight (75 Kgs) and lap times between the E90 and the E60, I decided to go with the bigger and more prestigious 5 series.

It looked out of this world at the time, and I didn't like its looks (the Alfa was much more beautifully designed), but somehow it was very impressive. The E60 screamed "I am here" whenever I came across it. It had great presence at the time (and might still have a lot of that till today). I bought the E60.

The Alfa 159 came out in 2005. The car was bigger than the Alfa 156, safer in crash tests, more comfortable, more reliable, had better build quality, more economical fuel wise, but somehow it was boring. It was too tamed. It had extra 150 kgs, and worse dynamic performace. I said, I will never buy the Alfa 159. Why should I, when it became exactly like an average of a 3 and a 5 series? It had lost the 156 agility, nimbleness, and amazing ability to jump from one lane to the other. "I will just keep buying BMWs" I said to myself.

Then came the new F10. Unfortunately, I started having the same feelings as when the 159 came out. I now have the feeling that the BMW is not much different than the E-class or the A6 or the Jaguar XF. They are all big, luxurious, elegant, prestigious, full of options, and have big tail lights.

"Why can't I justify buying the F10 then?" I asked myself.

But again, that's just me. I am the only one who drives like a maniac. I mean all my family memebers, friends, and colleagues like the F10. I must be wrong then. The F10 is a good car, I am just too into engineering and numbers I guess.

Back to Alfa Romeo. The Alfa 156 contributed to around half the sales in 2001. The safer, more luxurious, better quality, more refined, lower dB cabin 159 came out in 2005. Just look at the Alfa production numbers below.

Alfa Romeo Production:
2009: 110,000 units
2008: 103,097 units
2007: 151,898 units
2006: 157,794 units
2005: 150,815 units
2004: 162,179 units
2003: 182,469 units
2002: 187,437 units
2001: 213,638 units

But nah, the BMW is a much more stable and established brand than the Alfa Romeo. It will only lose a few maniac customers that get into dynamic and handling details. BMW will not be affected by its new business directions and it should grow and gain customers from competitor luxury car producers. It will not lose its customers to Audi, MB, Jag, Lexus, Acura, and Infinity due to their close dynamic performance.

Or........., will it ?

Petes550i

Well, anytime a newly-designed model is introduced, there are always talks about which direction the company is headed and which demographic is likely to be offended, etc. To me, I think BMW is just fine. Even during these times of recession, they continue to sell a ton of cars and consistently rank at the top or near the top in sales in every model category. The vast majority of people equate BMW with prestige, luxury, sport, and innovation....and nothing about the F10 is going to detrimentally change that. The F10 is going to appeal to the vast majority of those who already love BMW's. Yes, the hard-core sports enthusiasts will likely balk at the new model, but BMW is such a large, global mainstream automaker now and it has to appeal to the masses in order to compete in today's market. Change is always tough, but in time, people will accept it and move on.

Shebs

You know what is common between us?

We both love the BMW brand

vkhong

@Petes550i: Welcome to the fold, by the way.

What BMW is *good* at is igniting the passion within those who drive the well-engineered BMW automobiles, whether it is an E39, E60, F10 or others. That intangible quality also makes it hard for some owners to move from E39 to E60 and E60 to F10.

forceten

I tried contacting BMW about my dissatisfaction with the reports that the upcoming 5xxi xDrive models will not offer manual, and all I got was a canned Thank You and a pointer to their website for model information. When I replied incredulous that they'd ignore what was a long and detailed query with a form response they replied again saying Sorry we have no further information but you should check our website.

They used to respond to customers, but not anymore. Now they don't care enough even to craft a reply.

So yes, business direction can clearly affect sales, and I think they have changed direction away from what we enthusiasts believed was their core to soccer moms and old status-seekers.

We have been deemed irrelevant and unnecessary. It is no longer important to actually capture the joy of driving; its merely enough to pretend you have and market it to an audience inclined to believe you.

Ricracing

Nice writing Shebs,
But nah, the BMW is a much more stable and established brand than the Alfa Romeo. It will only lose a few maniac customers that get into dynamic and handling details. BMW will not be affected by its new business directions and it should grow and gain customers from competitor luxury car producers. It will not lose its customers to Audi, MB, Jag, Lexus, Acura, and Infinity due to their close dynamic performance.
Or........., will it ?
[/quote]

Actually Alfa Romeo is a very old brand, now exactly 100 years old.

The brand started in 1910 as the Anonyma Fabbrica Automobiili the 24th of June
as A.L.F.A.
Nicola Romeo came in as a new owner in 1915 and in 1919 the brand name was Alfa-Romeo.
In 1971 the name changed to Alfa Romeo.
Very long sport history etc. Check Wikipedia or Alfas own home pages.

I now and then, do test drive the Alfa's. They are great to drive and to look at.

But since I use my own limited founds for cars, I will never buy one.
I just don't trust the quality, they are Italian cars with a lot of electrical problems and
has too cheap and lousy parts.

In Finland we can have 37 C or minus 40 C, a Alfa Romeo can never do it, I'm sorry to say.

But as a second car, the Brera or the Spider would be nice.

m630

BMW is nothing of the such and it certainly has an identity crisis. It has made poor decisions in the past few years that has caught them now behind the curve and following more than leading, that is not a position bmw is used to, and not what will make it best in class. As the oil crisis has heated up in the past few years, bmw should have caught on that the thrust of its future products needed to be more agile and efficient, which its new cars are neither. When you offer a product that your core purchasers want, there is no such debate as to what direction a company is taking. Europe is a leader in Environmental and Green movements, and is not the model for building larger cars that overstep each model size as the F10 certainly has done in basically being a marginally smaller 7 series. It is the opposite of the direction bmw should have taken, and they will pay dearly when the final tally is done at the end of the f10's run vs the e60.

It is the hard core enthusiasts that model the brands image, and most are balking at the new direction of bmw, whether in its line cars or its M cars. I understand you have an F10 and must protect your mindset and purchase, but in reality it is not the proper car and it is not the proper model size for a 5 series. If you were buying the same size car in 2001, you would have bought an E38 and it would have been the biggest thing to ever come out of BMW. The F10 got it wrong and all objective people can admit that the car is too big, too heavy and too bloated for a 5 series. If this was the 7er, Id probably feel very different and say that BMW actually led by offering a top model in this size class, but they completely missed the mark as nearly all the rest of us can admit, even though we are die-hard bmw fans.

Yes, bmw will be fine, but that doesnt mean that they are going to be more successful, and that they are well positioned as a company for the next 5-6 years. They are not GM, and should never need to appeal to the masses, that is not who they are and not who they can be, you cant make the Ultimate Driving Machine your motto at the same time you are working to appeal to the masses

Ricracing

This is what the internet world is going towards, or actually is already.

It sucks bad. No one is accountable anymore for anything.

Like Toyota/Lexus proved - and BP.

Makes me mad!

Shebs

Thanks Ric for the info, but I am an experienced Alfisti

I sold my Alfa for the same reason. In a country with 20 to 40 degrees C temperature, I also had reliability problems.

But I did not mean that I would but one again.

I was just telling the story of a company that tried to be something else than what everyone wanted it to be. When Alfa started building more luxurious, comfy, reliable cars, they did not gain the BMW and Audi customers they targeted. Instead, Alfa lost their original faithful customers to BMW and Audi and sales went down.

The faithful Alfa customers that would go through all the reliability and quality problems just for a mere smile on the face in a corner decided to move to other brands when Alfa tried to be like those other brands.

I hope you can see the analogy here

Ricracing

m630

BMW is still the best in Class.

Europe is a leader in Environmental and Green movements and as the rest of the world shoud be.

The '11 car to buy is the BMW F10, 535dA.

BMW will make nice profits in 2011!