Quote:
Originally Posted by 325er
Agreed. My quibble is that an X3 should be more than just ok. It should blow the others away dynamically and mechanically and be targeted at those demanding performance. Instead they have converged with the competition more than ever before to satisfy the mass markets they serve. I understand the business logic and agree it is smart from that POV. My simple point is that this approach sacrifices the core of the brand and those who are loyal to it. A BMW used to be head and shoulders above the rest in the performance category.
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Not to perpetuate the back-and-forth opinion discussion on current versus classic and whether the brand has sold out to make a buck, but I do have a question after following the discussion.
Is it really true that they've
sacrificed the core of the brand? Isn't the core you're describing embodied in the various M models that are offered, or even some of the higher end standard models? These models are head and shoulders above the rest in performance, not only against other brands but even within the BMW brand itself. So have they sacrificed the core of the brand or simply diversified (as most successful businesses must) so that the mass market can support the purist, which lives on in the M?
BMW has always been about performance, but that doesn't mean every model performed as "the ultimate driving machine". Even within model families, there has been diversity where lower end offerings did not perform to the same level as their higher end siblings. To say that they're sacrificing the core of the brand seems...overstated.
That being said, I do think their marketing dept has gone overboard with branding now that there are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, X1, X3, X4, X5, X6, and soon-to-be X7 models out there
