[QUOTE=Carac;20665076]
Quote:
Originally Posted by YWGT3
Well, we all have opinions. Mine was just that if BMW didn't want dealers to have to discount cars to the extent they are, they shouldn't have made so many i8's. You have a car that they wanted to be their innovation and design flagship and instead of deciding to amortize development of mass production carbon fiber chassis/bodies through its application in other models, they just decided to make as many i8's as they possibly can. The result being: the most enthusiastic and eager i8 owners buy theirs when production is limited simply by early QA to make sure their factory and assembly process is sound. They then flood the market producing the car at a rate 2-3x that of sales. The bottom falls out of the market and something they want to be perceived as a premium product is so ubiquitous that it's out on the lot with their middle-manager lease specials. No one gets what they really want, owners get accelerated depreciation, BMW takes a hit in both perception and profit. Instead, they could have treated i8 production more like Audi does with the R8, Mercedes with the SLS and AMG GT, etc. where a car is (supposed to) only be produced for a serious customer order. But, as is the case with most of their product portfolio choices over the past 10 years, the bean counters won.
Sorry if I've rubbed anyone the wrong way here. It's just from my perspective and what I had read/been told during the run up to the i8 launch, that the car would be fairly limited. I knew it wouldn't be an appreciating asset, but I didn't think the market would drop so quickly. They hadn't indicated that they would be making as many cars as they were so it felt like being sold a false promise of a rare car they just turned around and made as many as possible once they had "suckered" us into buying new ones at MSRP (or way above that for some people). I'm getting the impression that was a feeling not many of us had, sorry for assuming.
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Point well taken and well heard with respect to the misleading experience you had with BMW and how it led to your decision to sell the i8.