OK, someone please explain this to me. The car world is looking like the last reel of Ghostbusters “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!” the whole lot, but for some reason, sales of BMW’s M-cars are up. WAY up.
Honda just axed the upcoming NSX, Subaru pulled out of the WRC, Honda dumped its F1 program, Audi is out of ALMS, and there’s rumors that if The Big Three get a bailout, it will come at the cost of no more NASCAR support … but BMW’s luxo/HiPo M division can’t seem to make the cars fast enough.
How good are sales of M cars you ask? They’re up 50% from last year, that’s how good. Jeez, FIFTY percent! That’s a big increase. Sales figures for 2008 thru November 2008, BMW has sold 22,340 M-Model cars worldwide compared to 14,092 vehicles in the same period in 2007.
Ludwig Willisch, President of BMW M GmbH, had this to say about it: “The fact that our dealers were able to supply significantly more vehicles than the average of the last nine months even in such dramatic times for the world economy demonstrates the fascination and attraction which BMW M automobiles exercise on our customers.”
OK, that’s nice & all that Ludwig (great name, huh?); everybody loves your cars, the Ms are so sweet that people still want them … that’s what I’d expect the CorpSpeak to be, but it’s not getting to the heart of the matter. OK, yes, BMW did introduce an all-new M3 in three body variations (Coupe, Sedan and Convertible). The M3 sold almost twice as well in its first year of production than its predecessor model did within the same period. So that’ll bump figures up some, sure. Add that to the breadth of M-series models available (which is an historical high). That would be seven M-series models, including three body types of the M3, the BMW M5 Sedan and Touring as well as the M6 Coupe and M6 Convertible.
Overall though, sales are down for the BMW brand in 2008 through November. Down 3.5% compare to the same period in 2007 to 1,105,112 units, to be exact.
Still, it’s odd, no?
Source: CarScoop
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