You don’t build a football team from the outside in, you build from the inside out. Once you’ve solidified the trenches, then you can spring for the pricey star-power wide receivers. That’s how BMW is going to build its portfolio moving forward, too—focus on the middle of the brand, where it has the most customers, and then build flashy “brand shapers.”
With fun-to-drive sports cars like the Z4 and luxury performance cars like the M8 reaching their end, BMW is going to pause their successors to focus on its meat and potatoes cars. Now that its Neue Klasse is finally on the market, cars like the new i3 and iX3 will be the main priority. Those are the cars that sell and the cars that make BMW the most money. And while they might not be the thrilling sports cars fans want, they’re the most important. The Neue Klasse wasn’t cheap to develop and someone’s gotta pay for it.
“For us, the middle of the brand is most important,” Neue Klasse boss Mike Reichelt told CarSales. “For us, it was really important to start in the mid-size class because there is the volume. To scale the new technology and architecture, you need volume.”
Photo: BMW
Interesting cars that give BMW more of an exciting brand image, cars the Bavarians call “brand shapers,” will come with time, though. “The i3 was a brand shaper, for example. Or the i8. That was the time to make a brand shaper, far away from the normal series portfolio. Now, it is completely the other way,” Reichelt said.
It’s unclear when the appropriate time for a new brand-shaping vehicle will be, but it’s clear that BMW hasn’t forgotten the need for such cars even in an increasingly electrified market. When asked about a potential electric Z4 replacement, a BMW bigwig recently said that “BMW will always look into sports cars, yes, and that EVs have a space in sports cars, also. So, I would say not unlikely, but not something that will be imminently launched next year.”
Cool cars are coming, people. But focus needs to be on selling a bunch of Neue Klasse cars first.
