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      01-03-2013, 12:05 PM   #44
clarence
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Drives: F30 328i M-Sport
Join Date: Mar 2006
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Quote:
Originally Posted by verbs View Post
If a special adjustment has to be made just for middle east cars, they're not going to recover the costs over the minuscule run of maybe 10-20 m-sport cars a year.

If these cars are produced in a factory that can handle adjustments like this in the blink of an eye, and the cars meant for the middle east don't have something different about them which prevents the extra cooling from being fit-able without having to move other components around, then no it's not a problem.

I understand the litigious aspect as well. Car companies figure out the probability and cost of a lawsuit and compare it to the cost to make an adjustment. The chance of one of the 10-20 middle east M-sport car purchasers per year suing BMW for cooling issues is next nothing. If it costs more for BMW to add the extra cooling vs. just plugging in some fog lights then there's no business case to provide the extra cooling to the middle east.

Whether it's production cost increases or litigation likelihood, the fact that only a handful of M-sports will go to the middle east could very likely be a big factor in why they're not getting the extra cooling.
The R&D cost for additional cooling has already been sunk for US-spec cars, so it'll cost nothing more to fit them to even a production run of a single unit. The line workers just fit or not fit certain parts according to the computer screen. If BMW deems it's necessary for certain markets to have the additional cooling then they'll include it in their national spec. The marginal cost is only the additional parts.
As for no-fogs, BMW can offset the extra cost of the additional cooling with not fitting fogs.
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