05-29-2013, 09:45 AM | #155 | |
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Kinda old thread, but it catched me
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Alpina sells D5 "single" Turbo exclusively for Japan instead of BiTurbo in order to adapt to Japanese strict regulations on diesel emissions. This means they are capable of manufacturing country-specific model. In fact, I heard Alpina has been interested in the US market for some time, but your country is too big for them! As said, Alpina's production is very low because they almost hand-makes their cars (one meister per one car), so they can hardly handle the orders if they get into the US. One exception is B7. You can buy B7 through BMW dealerships in your country as an alternative "M"7. The 7er doesn't sell much even in the US, compared to 3er and 5er.
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05-29-2013, 10:02 AM | #156 |
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^^^
Good insight. I think that the production capacity issues could ultimately be addressed. But then you would still have the costs issue. In the US, we have generally some of the lowest prices in the world. For larger manufacturers the lower profit per unit is made up for by the high volume. For someone like Alpina, that model probably cannot be sustained. There would probably be very few people choosing an Alpina over an M at a similar price in this country as it is, but if the Alpina costs more then you can completely forget about it. This also happens to be why the B7 works here too - there is no M7 model as you mention, so there is nothing for it to compare unfavorably against. |
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05-29-2013, 10:05 AM | #157 | |
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05-29-2013, 10:18 AM | #158 | ||
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05-29-2013, 01:13 PM | #159 | |
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Importing a car into the USA is *very* expensive from a safety point of view, not just country specific production but additional crash testing etc. I think more socialist governments provide these services to the auto companies while in the US you have to fund a lot of it. Liability is obviously a bigger concern here, since cry baby lawsuits and mcdonalds coffee on the lap become monumental problems. In Japan, I've heard that certain Toyota failures occur but never reache the press due to national pride in the brand. I will mention that this is speculation and I'm probably exaggerating the impact, but otherwise it seems hard to think Alpina can't make a business case for selling in NA, especially when NA is BMW's bread and butter, at least now while Europe recovers from the recession.
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05-30-2013, 12:05 AM | #160 | |
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From consumers' point of view, I envy your country because you can buy German cars relatively cheaper than Japanese...
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05-30-2013, 07:10 AM | #161 | |
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As to your last point, we can thank the big 3 for that OTOH you guys tend to get cooler cars (especially performance variants from Japanese OEM's), this Alpina being a good example
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