February 6, 2008
SOME customers waiting patiently for a new BMW have received unhappy news: 122 were totaled during a rough North Atlantic crossing that damaged 430 of the vehicles, according to The New York Times.
The Courage, a car carrier headed to New Jersey from a North Sea port in Germany, rolled in heavy winter seas on Jan. 2, breaking BMWs from their lashings and sending them pinballing around a cargo hold. The ship docked in Newark on Jan. 11.
“Once one car broke loose, it all started going downhill,” said Tom Plucinsky, a BMW spokesman. “They just beat each other to death.”
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth 
at 11:33 AM | Permalink
December 6, 2007
Back in 2001 it was a matter of pride for BMW that it was building the all-new MINI in the U.K., home of the original city car that was launched in August 1959, according to thecarconnection.com.
Using the former British Leyland plant at Cowley, Oxford, gave the car credibility even though it was a German project. But that was before the cute car became a global sales phenomenon, spawning a cabriolet and now the Clubman estate.
The next stage, as widely predicted, is a MINI Sports Activity Vehicle (SAV), and there's simply not room at Cowley to build it. The answer has come in the form of Magna Steyr in Graz, Austria.
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth at 11:59 AM | Permalink
November 6, 2007
FRANKFURT, Germany -- Luxury automaker BMW AG saw its third-quarter net profit leap 78 percent, driven higher by increased sales, and raised its sales outlook for the rest of 2007 on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.
The Munich-based automaker earned 803 million euros ($1.2 billion) in the July-September period compared with 452 million euros a year earlier and beating the 605 million euros ($876.5 million) that analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast.
(The euro has risen so much against the dollar since last year, converting the 452 million euros to dollars would be misleading.)
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth at 10:54 AM | Permalink
October 26, 2007
If you want more evidence of the increasing sophistication of Europe's new generation of diesel engines, check out Matt Rigby's review of the BMW 123d M Sport Coupe on autocar.co.uk.
He calls it a "hugely significant car" because of t"he 123d or, more specifically, the 201bhp twin-turbo turbodiesel under the bonnet."
"If that sounds like so much hyperbole, then consider a few key facts," he writes. "This is the most powerful four-pot turbodiesel you can buy, as well as being the only one equipped with twin turbos.
"But the killer point is that all this comes coupled with serious green credentials. So you get 295lb ft, 0-62mph in 7.0sec and a 148mph top speed at the same time as 54.7mpg and 138g/km of CO2."
By the by, I'll bet that g/km of CO2, or grams of CO2 emissions per kilometer, is a measure of pollution unknown to most of us in America.
But 138 g/km of CO2 is below the target level that the European motor industry reached with the European government in the mid-1990s to reduce average emissions from new cars.
Under that voluntary agreement, average emissions should fall to 140 g/km CO2 by 2008.
- Peter C.T. Elsworth
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth at 10:29 AM | Permalink
October 15, 2007
With the separation from Chrysler complete, Daimler AG is very likely to pursue closer ties with its archrival BMW, according to knowledgeable sources inside the automaker, according to thecarconnection.com
For the past several weeks, the German press has been filled with speculation about joint development projects for everything from small cars to new engines. Moreover, Daimler chief executive officer Dieter Zetsche didn't exactly reject the idea of closer ties with BMW.
Daimler, in fact, made one known but ultimately unsuccessful bid for BMW back in the early 1960s and by and large the two companies have kept their distance for the past half-century or so.
In recent years, however, BMW and Daimler have collaborated successfully in the development of hybrids and more projects are possible if they are mutually beneficial, Zetsche said during the special shareholders meeting in Berlin earlier this month.
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth at 11:18 AM | Permalink
October 3, 2007
For much of the 1980s, enthusiasts cringed as BMW seemed to let slip its well-deserved image as creator of the Ultimate Driving Machine to assume a new role: marketer of the Ultimate Fashion Accessory, according to the New York Times.
Cars from the company credited with fathering the modern sport sedan were becoming known as much for the status they conferred as the performance they delivered — badges of self-indulgence for me-generation drivers. When the stock market swooned in 1987, sales plummeted — by 45 percent in the United States in 1986-91.
Many factors contributed to BMW’s subsequent revival. Among them were the company’s efforts to re-establish its performance reputation, in part through the release of special factory-tuned versions of its bread-and-butter models under the BMW M badge.
That reputation will get another upgrade next spring when a new-generation M3 arrives in the United States, two decades after the first M cars made their American debut. The fiercest M3 yet, the 2008 model will be powered by a 414-horsepower V-8, a vast leap from the original 4-cylinder M3 of the 1980s.
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth at 10:34 AM | Permalink
September 13, 2007
FRANKFURT, Germany — Two decades after diesel cars all but vanished from American roads in a cloud of sooty smoke, are Americans ready to give them another try?
That is a big question at the Frankfurt Motor Show this week, as European carmakers roll out “clean diesel” vehicles — their answer to the call for more efficient, climate-friendly cars, according to the New York Times.
Betting that diesel power will become an alternative to the hybrids popularized by Toyota and other Japanese carmakers, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Volkswagen all plan to sell new diesel automobiles in the United States in the coming year, and many of them are on show here
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth at 11:12 AM | Permalink
September 12, 2007
FRANKFURT, Germany — It’s hardly surprising that a car that bills itself as the “ultimate driving machine” would inspire imitation. But to BMW, the CEO, a Chinese sport utility vehicle, is less respectful homage than brazen knockoff, according to the New York Times.
Charging that the CEO is a copy of BMW’s popular X5, the company has filed suit to prohibit its sale in Germany by the Chinese carmaker Shuanghuan Automobile.
That did not prevent Shuanghuan’s European importer from showing off the CEO on Tuesday at the Frankfurt Motor Show.
It was a vivid illustration, on the show’s first day, that the struggle over intellectual property rights between China and the West — a battle that has ranged over products from designer handbags to computer chips — now extends to cars.
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth at 10:17 AM | Permalink
September 10, 2007
USUALLY, when Madison Avenue uses nostalgia to peddle products, the result is the kind of “misty water-colored memories” that Barbra Streisand warbled about in “The Way We Were.” By contrast, a humorous campaign from BMW stands out for asking consumers to reminisce about a time in their lives they might have sought to forget, according to the New York Times.
The theme is “Relearn to drive,” which is also the address for the campaign’s Web site. The goal is to persuade car owners to consider attending the BMW school because a good deal of what they learned when they were taught to drive is outdated or irrelevant — or may have been wrong in the first place.
To sow doubts about how people were taught to drive and persuade them to “undo the damage,” the site presents nine archetypal (or stereotypical) characters intended to represent the people who helped most Americans learn to drive.
The characters include a feckless stepfather, an impatient older sister, a brusque high school coach, a bumpkin of a country cousin and a neurotic mother. They are all dissected in droll descriptions as basically well-meaning but hopelessly unqualified for the task. Thus the need for a visit to the school, which the Web site promotes as having been “built from the ground up to make you a better driver.”
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth at 10:50 AM | Permalink
