All Entries Tagged With: "BMW 1 Series"
What Price For Style? Audi A3 Cabriolet
By Gunnar Heinrich
CHASING BMW can’t be easy, but it sure is fun. Most of the time.
Audi is going flat out to prove that as underdog it can eat, run, play, and fight with the big dogs. And Ingolstadt’s best have proven themselves versatile in matching Munich car for car, round for round, chow bowl for chow bowl.
But after a while it must wear on the quad ringers to be the last in the pack. The runt in the litter.
Which brings us nicely to the A3 cabriolet.
It’s right that Audi makes shortened 2+2 ragtop. When CAR magazine pitted the Audi’s cabrio-light against BMW’s 1-Series ragtop, based on both carmaker’s pedigrees the fight was well matched.
But as you parcel through the photos and read the accounts of those scribes lucky enough to be on the far side of the Pond to have a go behind the wheel, it seems that Audi’s latest is banking mostly on style over substance.
The car’s tight proportions and cool color combos summon visions of driving along the coast somewhere in the Mediterranean.
Capris and Portofinos…
It’s a fun, sporty, young look. But the car does channel a little too much VW Golf, which takes some of the sheen off the prestige in the marque and makes the price for the buy a little less palatable.
That might be just what Audi wants – to persuade moneyed 20 somethings that there’s life after Volkswagen. It’s a bridge, as it were.
But to be frank, a VW Eos looks to give us more (a doubtlessly expensive electrically retractable hardtop with sliding moonroof) for our dollars (or euros) and for less.
And where the rubber meets the road, reports have told that BMW’s 1er bests the Audi in performance (no surprise.)
So on the basis of practicality and performance, the A3 cabrio is already outdone by its competition. Can the car’s looks alone push sales in this new segment?
Is style enough?
[Linked: Edmunds]
BMW Off To A "Restrained Start", UK Subsidiaries Save The Day
M.Y. 2008 M3 Sedan Can’t Arrive Too Soon.Paraphrasing (crudely) the seminal 80′s flick Wall Street: the rich may be bitching, but the super-rich ain’t.
All but the truly inflation proof are subject to the uneasy prospect of slowing markets this world round. And that maxim is coming home to the Roundel whose North American sales spun a little too long off the line – losing share to last year’s performance by 4.1%.
BMW’s press release admitted that the marque started the year with “a restrained start.”
That having been said, more of the very well-off took delivery of new Rolls-Royces than e’er before. Rolls sales were up a prosperous 64% (translating to 41 units) thanks to the new convertible.
Cheap ‘n cheerful (in this company at least) MINIs also faired well by jumping 13.3% over January last year.
This all means that for once, it was the British subsidiaries’ performance that drove share performance – not the hyper-efficient Teutons. Score two for Albion.
Still, BMW’s right to spin a positive sales outlook for the near future.
“In 2008, the BMW Group will once again maintain its top position as the world’s leading manufacturer of premium vehicles. We have once again taken on a great deal and are aiming to set new sales records for all three brands,” promised marketing man Stefan Krause.
With the impending intro of the oh-so hot 1-Series, the so/so M3 sedan, and the sure-to-be-at-every-soccer-match X6, he may just be right. Though, the BMW’s intake will be whatever the market will bear.
And there are only so many of the super-rich to go around.
BMW Avoids What Mercedes Can’t
Cheap Baby Benz.Mercedes-Benz has never done entry level convincingly. Take the original “Baby Benz.” The 190E is now looked upon as a representative of the tri-star’s golden era of over-engineered excellence (1980s to mid 1990s).
Mercedes has even gone to some pains to link the current C-Class to the original with the hope that some of that old school cache rubs off on the new version and spur sales.
Except we must remember that the original 190E was pure crap.
Harsh? Well, aside from looks which were classic stolid Benz – no qualm from me – the diminutive car looked and felt really cheap.
Close the door and the sound issued from the pressed steel made some of us wonder if the door was made out of a composite of recycled Coke cans.
Add some insult to probable injury: there was just no room inside the cabin. The owner/driver had to be a contortionist to get in and out. And the li’l Benz might as well have been a two-door hatchback for all the good the rear seat did those poor souls unfortunate enough to have to ride back there.
For Baby Benz buyers, the car’s low price meant they had to settle for a high compromise. In the U.S., the little sedan served as a poseur vehicle – made expressly for those with champagne wishes and caviar dreams.
That having been said, Mercedes’ Teutonic rival BMW continues to do entry-level very, very well.
No one of sound mind can accuse the 3-Series of being merely a cheap variant of a 5 or 7-Series. The beauty of the small Bimmers is that a 335i seems to be assembled with as much care and high craftsmanship as is found in a 760Li. What’s more, there’s nothing about a 3-Series that smacks “social climber” so much as does a Mercedes C-Class.
Why is that? Simple. The 3-Series line has been BMW in its purest form; a straightforward performance sedan for the motoring enthusiast.
Now, with the onset of more luxurious packages and the overarching popularity of the 3s with badge conscious co-eds at campuses across America, that image has changed a bit. But the line’s freedom from patronizing scorn remains.
Hyped 1-Series.And here comes the 1-Series and with it rises the desires of performance enthusiasts and Teuton-philes everywhere. Hailed as the no-nonsense performance BMW that will stand as the spiritual successor of the 2002, the 1-Series will also manage to avoid being chastised as a poor-man’s Bimmer.
There’s every reason to believe (from media hype anyway) that any die-hard fan of the marque will want one – let alone those college folk who will just drive it for the name.
So, while we can see small and cheap can work for performance, there’s nothing directly luxurious or prestigious about a small entry-level sedan. That’s where the C-Class fails the American image for Mercedes-Benz.
Which brings us to another point. There’s nothing inherently marketable about an A-Class or B-Class hatchbacks that will appeal to the American buyer. Benz is known for opulence Stateside, which means that the Tri-Star will have great difficulty implementing a strategy to rival the 1-Series sedan, coupe, and convertible.
But you know they’ll try. They just won’t have an icon from the past to inspire would-be buyers today. The Baby Benz’s role is already assigned.
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