BMW unveiled its sixth-generation 3 Series on Friday and has now confirmed that it will invest EUR1bn (US$1.37bn) at the three plants earmarked to manufacture the new model slated to go on sale from 11 February, 2012.
The 3 is the company’s key high-volume model with more than 12m sales since it was first launched in 1975. Last year, sales totaled almost 400,000, almost a third of total global BMW sales.
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The new 3 – like the current one – will be built at the company’s plants in Munich and Regensburg in Germany and Rosslyn, South Africa. It will also be assembled from KD packs in markets such as India and China.
The company says that its main markets will be the US, China, the UK and Germany.
Meanwhile, finance chief Friedrich Eichiner has said that BMW can still achieve EBIT of between 8%-10% next year in its core automotive business, a target it originally announced in 2007, pre-recession.
Eichiner told German weekly business magazine WirtschaftsWoche that the margin remained his target for 2012 and said that this year’s forecast for vehicle sales remained at more than 1.6m.
