M for Mad Marketing

The customer ain't king if your choices are limited for artificial reasons. This time I pick BMW and their 1-series. The Ultimate Driving Machine maker tells you, "not possible, sorry", if you wish to buy a 3-door BMW 135i "hatch coupé".  Only the cabrio and coupe are offered with the twin turbo called N54B30, the hatchback versions' top engine is the 130i with around 270hp named N52B30.

The 130i is a very nice car with a great engine, no doubt, but I'd prefer a 135i* 3-door (called E81) to all other body styles like the 5-door "sports hatch" (the E87 looks awkward) or the coupé (nice, the back of the E82 looks a bit short though) or the cabriolet (E88, best of the rest). If you are North American, you don't even have the choice of the hatchback variants, you just get the coupé and the convertible, full stop. Someone has decided, that practicality is not for the Americans.

Sorry to say, the argument that hatches won't sell so well overseas doesn't really count. So what, you only ship what you sell, right? So why not offering the hatches to Canadian and US-customers? Ask the marketing guys.

British customers are also getting a special treatment. They are offered even fewer engine choices for the hatches than the other Europeans, including the Irish. The British can't drive a lovely 6-cylinder hatch, whereas the Irish apparently can. So another technology argument goes out the window, both countries have the steering on the right side... Oh and the Brits have fewer colour choices and trim options as well. Dear UK customer, please send your complaint to BMW UK.

And for the rest of us Europeans, not being allowed to buy a 135i 3-door is pure marketing sadism. Someone has decided, that the 3-door with the biggest engine might be too much of a boy racer, only worthy for the 135i coupé and convertible. No technology reasons at all. But isn't that dissing customers? Are hatchbacks only for the practical poor? Dear BMW marketing people, have you looked at your price lists recently? I didn't want to spend hours playing with the configurator, so I just selected a colour, leather trim and the best rims I could find. The alloy wheels came of course with an expensive M-package. Without choosing any other options I already came close to 40,000 Euros for the 130i 3-door. I guess that a bit of window shopping would easily lift the price up to 45,000 or more!
So we are talking serious premium money and any discussion on "image"-based decisions should end right there. They are deliberate and presumptuous crap.

And BTW, the 3d-door hatch coupé is the best looking 1-series and quite unique. It features frame-less doors in a shape which is the closest you can get to a compact car shooting brake other than a Scirocco or a Mini Clubman.

If you don't want to produce an M version, which is another debate, why not at least make the hatches more desirable with the available components and engines?

And this is also true for Alpina. A B1 version of all 1-series variants would highly desirable. Alpina have the components on the shelf. The engine of the B3, which is basically a reworked Bi-turbo 335i engine which in turn is the same machine for the 135i models. So fitting shouldn't be a problem. The development of the chassis components shouldn't be a big deal either, because they share a lot with the 3-series. And both Alpina rim models are simply gorgeous. Here again, the "Classic" wheel is being offered for the 1-series by Alpina, why not the "Dynamic" as well, which incidentally would look even better on the 1-series than the Classic?

Dear Mr Bovensiepen (the son of the Alpina-founder), a 1-series version wouldn't taint your image as an exclusive manufacturer at all. Your father had build similar-sized cars in the 70s and 80s. They were based on the 2002 & co followed by the first generations of the 3 series. An Alpina B1 would easily and deservingly earn the title of "automental car concept" as described on our automental to do list. Even more so when converted to autogas :-)

Now that the 1-series first generation will soon be replaced, I hope the next generation will offer those choices for the customers. Maybe we should notify the marketing guys in Munich. Keyword: mad marketing.

Note: I initially thought that the two engines wee basically the same, one with twin turbo chargers (135i N54B30) and one without turbo chargers (130i N52B30). When researching this article I learned that the 2 are completely different engines, the more powerful one weighing 30kg more! The twin-turbo is apparently a bit older and has been designed for torque. That doesn't change the point of this article, because other body types of the 1-series are sold with the heavy engine.


*Update: My preference changed to the 130i engine shortly after I finished this article. Read this post to find out why :-) Though it still doesn't get BMW off the hook for limiting the customer choice.