BMW wants more people to custom order the X3

• Tweet

• Tweet

BMW is not content with having the global crown for sales in the luxury department, they want to win over the American market by moving them away from Lexus and in order to achieve this they are pushing their BMW Individual program.

Basically what they want stateside buyers to do is to buy a car with what they want on it in terms of trim levels instead of just buying what the dealer has to offer at a particular time. Since the next car they will be launching in the U.S. is the 2011 BMW X3 that will be the one that they plan on starting this car buying revolution with.

This form of sales helps BMW with their projections and inventory but it also helps you get the car you wanted and it is a system that is successfully applied in Europe where almost 50% of all BMW’s sold are custom ordered.

This isn’t as simple as it sounds since Americans enjoy the idea of hitting a dealer showroom and leaving with a car off that lot the same day so if BMW will want the higher profit margins and the reduction in inventory they’ll have to be innovative here.

So in order to make this a reality the new BMW X3’s production will be moved from Austria to the recently expanded Spartanburg plant in South Carolina. Building the crossovers here will allow BMW to drastically cut delivery times and BMW will also be more heavily promoting its factory delivery program and the driving classes it offers at the nearby Performance Driving School.