BMW’s Spartanburg vehicle plant in South Carolina reportedly plans an 11am Monday celebration to announce expansion but officials refuse to release further details ahead of the event.
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“We’ve sent out invitations to several hundred business and political leaders,” a spokesman told a local paper. “We’ll make an announcement (on Monday) about an additional investment in our plant.”
The company also declined to give any details to the Reuters news agency.
The Spartanburg Herald-Journal said the expansion was part of BMW’s plan to produce 240,000 vehicles a year at the plant by 2012, up from 160,000 to 170,000 this year. It achieved record production in 2003, when it built 166,000.
The plant currently builds the X5 SUV and Z4 roadster and will add the X6 SUV later this year.
It will gain production of the next-generation X3 SAV from Magna Steyr in Austria around 2010 when production of the Z4 is moved to Germany.
The paper said the plant also will begin building diesel versions of the X5 for the US market later this year [it already builds diesels for export] and will produce a hybrid version of the X6 starting in 2009.
