BMW Brand Worldwide Production By Nation : 2012

Bread 'n Butter Model - The 3 Series 

In the late 1950's, BMW was on the ropes so to speak. It bought the rights to make the Isetta 'Bubble Car', which was successful. It then bought the Glas car company, which helped it get much needed technologies. From there BMW improved it's product and reputation.

For the size of the company (15th in the world for cars & LCVs), it has a limited spread of factories. I see that as a more profitable option than having small operations all over the place. Brazil will likely be the next country BMW manufactures in.

For 2012, German production was up 4%, USA +7%, China +53% and the RSA +46%. Total production increased 9%. Worldwide share was up slightly from 1.9 to 2.0%. The colour coding is according to regions cars are made, not the fact I like a rainbow effect.

	11	12		2011	Shr	2012	Shr
	1	1	Germany	1,005,259	69.8%	1,043,732	66.2%
	2	2	USA	280,889	19.5%	301,519	19.1%
	3	3	China	98,241	6.8%	150,052	9.5%
	4	4	South Africa	55,926	3.9%	81,760	5.2%
			Total	1,440,315	1.9%	1,577,063	2.0%

BMW does marketing and niche finding very well. It benefits too from being in the premium segment, one that is less affected by economic fluctuations. It is the largest car premium marque and is fighting to maintain that position. Of course these figures include LCVs too, which puts Mercedes slightly ahead. As MB has gone shy when publishing figures in detail, they are not included in this blog.

BMW 6 Series