Quote:
Originally Posted by Antares
The discussion at BMW is going into the pricing bracket direction.
1er sedan: front wheel drive:
- cheaper (long term; RWD is in short term the same, since BMW has big volume on RWD parts shared with 3er, and current 1er)
- it can be placed in a lower price segment (direct answer to Audi A3 sedan and Mercedes CLA)
- more roomy interior
FWD is easy to justify for a Golf form (current 3 and 5 door 1er), for a BMW sedan? brand image is at risk
2er Gran Coupe - the price segmentation becomes a mess of its own:
-the price must be higher than 2er Coupe = to close to 3er price
-the current 1er RWD is fixing the price of the 2er Coupe, this cannot be moved lower to make room for a normally priced 2 Gran Coupe
-RWD requires a longer car if you want to stuff 4 doors and have a decent interior length
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I agree with you about the pricing mess that this very granular segmentation is going to cause. The price deltas between all of these models is going to be in the hundreds of dollars in a lot of instances, I'm guessing.
As for the point that I bolded, this isn't going to factor into whether or not this car is the RWD M2 Gran Coupe or a so-called FWD 1-series sedan (which I don't see happening). BMW is already making a 2-series Gran Coupe, and making an M version doesn't have any impact on size at that point.