As I sit on the kerb surveying my suburban street, this pooch is very grateful to be offered a plethora of tasty metal to lift my leg against. And I can’t help but notice just how many of the cars come from the stable of one car manufacturer. From previous generations of BMW management, the 3s are scattered like leaves, the Minis glisten in their chrome-laden cuteness and the odd X5 sticks up like the Matterhorn in an Alpine range, writes Big Dog.
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It’s a typical street in a wealthy suburb – it could be just about anywhere in Europe. And two things stand out: of the old 5 there is a reassuring presence, while of the new 5 there is only one lonesome example, while the crush of S-Class is not troubled by the presence of a single 7. When the customer isn’t sure, and an alternative exists, even the strongest brand name can’t convince and it seems that maybe, just maybe…?
Of course the sales numbers are still great, underpinned in the last few years by the mighty 3-series (a car from the previous management team, who actually knew a thing or two about cars) and they’re about to show another flurry as the 1 shows some volume. But the back of the new 3 looks like it was styled in Japan in the 1990s and the 1 is actually not nearly as good as it should be.
If you want a rear drive car of that size, biased towards a sporty feel, what else can you buy? So the 1 will sell because Audi doesn’t make a real competitor, but if they did, do you really think the punters would buy a car whose glovebox lid is attached with a piece of string and looks like it has been hit in the side?
As Asia opens up and vast new markets are built, BMW will, by default, sell more cars than before, the profits over the next few years will rise further and the company will give the impression of immense corporate strength. But the legacy left for those to follow may just not be quite what is imagined; after all, will the hunger for sheer volume lead to a slump in per unit profit, desirability and further question the German myth of reliability?
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By GlobalDataOne aspect seems to underpin a growing poverty of internal questioning – the Bangle issue. Bangle, like most talented and exciting designers, suffers from a desire to educate and enlighten the masses, which with the full arrogance of the designer’s guild, they believe are just a bunch of semi-literate peasants who need to be taught what’s good for them. Bless them though, the peasants really are revolting and when Bangle challenges, they buy something else.
Now don’t get me wrong, somewhere in his designs lurks something really rather good, but he needs to be watched and when he isn’t, they all go a little off course. Now I don’t claim to know much about style, but the 7 is surely a design dog, only rivalled by the Scorpio for recent eurozone blunders, while a 6 parked next to an SL suddenly looks like a Kindergarten drawing.
And there were plenty of mutterings from inside the company before they arrived, but in a culture where no criticism can be accepted, and with all the pomposity of the emperor’s new clothes, the things just got built. And Bangle got promoted!? Is this a case of saving face, not for Bangle of course, but for those above who allowed him to do what he wanted and approved these toad-like creations – after all, they can’t be wrong?
And don’t expect the engineers to always save the day – the new 5 just isn’t that good. A fine car by many yardsticks of course, but not the default brilliant machine the old one was, with some quite peculiar faults in some set ups. And the less said about the horrid X3 the better! And while the E46 has been the George Clooney of motor vehicles, looking better and better as it hit middle age (so you didn’t mind that everyone has one, including the tea lady) will the new one really survive as well in the face of ever stiffer competition and with looks that are hardly likely to benefit from being as common as mud, especially as BMW look likely to shorten the derivative intro dates to gain a short-term but quick to falter boost in sales?
Being a BMW executive is clearly a thankless task these days. Whenever I meet them now they no longer seem like the happy-go-lucky survivors of a great battle, as they did in the immediate post-Rover days. Rather, they now seem a bunch of corporate clones, with a few at the top pulling all the strings and the rest just bickering and fighting to get to the top. And the customers? The journalists? The analysts? Well they should consider themselves damned lucky just to be allowed to stand near a BMW!! At BMW, the chiefs under the great and all seeing Dr Plonker are right, and damn the rest! But are they good enough to run a stifled and introverted corporation?
While sitting under the table in a Frankfurt bar, Big Dog couldn’t help but hear two city types chewing the cud. Seems sleepy Stefan, BMW’s enigmatic CFO, was asked a little while ago whether he was worried about the falling dollar, but told the boys that he still slept well at night. Seems he may have slept a bit too well and missed the dollar’s plunge, perhaps leaving a company that once turned hedging into a major profit centre with a bit of exposure on the currency front?
The question has to be, is all well at the world of BMW, or has moving house while the 1970s green paint in the Cylinder building is re-touched had a detrimental effect? If being corporate has become more important for executives than succeeding, BMW’s time at the top of the automotive heap looks like being a short one.
Big Dog
The strong views expressed in this column are exclusively those of Big Dog and are not necessarily reflective of those of the publisher, editor or other members of the just-auto editorial team. just-auto gives Big Dog an occasional platform (and dog biscuits).
