[BD550]

Originally Posted by J-RO

What's the point of buying a luxury brand if they remove all of the luxury!

Generally a pretty negative tone coming out of this announcement from the forum. But what they said is that they are going to reduce Production costs in order to maintain competitiveness with Daimler (Mercedes) and VW (Audi). That does not mean de-feature nor necessarily mean lower quality materials. If they do those things it would kill their value proposition to the consumer, and you may as well buy a Camry. They need to continue to provide a high quality product and a comparable cost to the premium segment competition. What I read is that they are probably going to continue to invest, and demand that their suppliers invest in automation, and other things that make manufacturing processes less costly. And it probably involves a continued move toward simpler, battery powered/augmented engines that are lower cost to manufacture. That seems to be the path of the entire segment. I just dont see the premium segment converging with the mid-tier segment any time soon. BMW just needs to keep pace with its value proposition, and that is not a bad thing.