[harma24]

Originally Posted by USA-RET

One could argue that the wages and job would be of greater value to a Mexican worker than one in Germany thereby providing an incentive to do a good job.

Maybe since the wages for assembly line workers in Mexico are likely a lot lower than the wages in Germany, the price for the next gen 2-series will come down!



What? No one is with me here? I mean, it's logical, right?

[Sportstick]

Originally Posted by harma24

Maybe since the wages for assembly line workers in Mexico are likely a lot lower than the wages in Germany, the price for the next gen 2-series will come down!

What? No one is with me here? I mean, it's logical, right?

Regretfully, it is not logical and it will not happen, unless they reposition or create a new base model content level specifically to market and generate incremental consideration. Pricing, always assuming a positive margin, is not related to cost. Pricing and cost management are two different disciplines in a vehicle manufacturer, likely managed by different financial staff. Cost reductions, whether from labor burden or by dropping rear floor mats, are simply margin improvements to meet the likely financial task each product team has every year for X% gain. Pricing is derived from optimizing market tolerance versus volume, including positioning versus targeted competition. Ideal pricing is that which results in enough demand for one more unit than the plant has capacity. Lower price that results in an easy sell-out is viewed as money left "on the table". A higher price that suppresses demand below plant capacity simply triggers incentives to restore the balance.

Building the 2 and 3 Series in Mexico allows BMW to save variable cost which must have offset the new plant investment in the business case. At the one of the three Detroit-based OEMs where I worked for 2+ decades, we found that quality from our Mexican plants was excellent and the workforce highly dedicated. With BMW establishing the same processes and standards as at other plants, there is no reason to be leery of a Mexican-built Bimmer. As well, the fantasy about "Black Forest elves" building BMWs in Germany is far overstated. Much of the BMW workforce are immigrant workers, many from Hungary. Absolutely nothing wrong with that at all, but the reality is different from the magical imagery some carry in their automotive hopes and dreams.

[cooolone2]

I laugh at the complete ignorance of "Made in Mexico" with regard to Quality (control) and Defect (management)... Doesn't matter if you want a car or any other product made there. It's all the same (garbage)... Believe what you want, but the fact is in the pudding!

Like I said, if they were so good, they'd made their own a long long time ago! And for the record, I'm well aware of Auto Parts being made in Mexico since the 80's. Doesn't change a thing! Because if you think the education system there produces enough competent workforce to reliably compete with Germany, you're confused. The issue is Risk assessment and the Bean counters have figured that assumed risk of losses is lower than the higher German manufacturing cost they'll offset from manufacturing in Mexico. That's it! Simple

You can put lipstick in a pig, it's still a pig!

Lol

[aerobod]

Toyota, Honda and other manufacturers have no discernible quality differences in the cars they produce in Mexico or elsewhere, according to JD Powers: https://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/...reliable-.html

[Sportstick]

Originally Posted by aerobod

Toyota, Honda and other manufacturers have no discernible quality differences in the cars they produce in Mexico or elsewhere, according to JD Powers: https://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/...reliable-.html

Of course. This was also true for my two vehicle programs, except for some occasions when the Mexican built vehicles had superior quality audit scores. The Japanese had the same relative concerns about having a Honda plant in the US (Marysville, Ohio), suffering from the same kind of baseless rants we now encounter about Mexico, until that plant actually outscored comparable Accords imported from Japan. A wide variety of brands have highly successful assembly operations in Mexico.

https://www.marklines.com/en/global/mex

The bottom line remains...the plant and the parts don't know where they are and if the OEM has standardized and repeatable processes and a trained team of operators, preconceived notions about the results being inherently poor in some countries vs. others is simply unfounded bias.

[aerobod]

Global manufacture of products presents no barrier to consistent quality no, matter where the product is manufactured, it is down to the manufacturing processes and product design more than anything else, they don’t vary from plant to plant when properly implemented.

The majority of global brand manufacturing of computer equipment is done in China, with no difference in quality than equipment manufactured elsewhere. In the 1980s I was involved with one of the world’s most sophisticated and global parts diverse mid-frame disk manufacturing lines at IBM in the UK, I was one of the product development engineers seconded to the manufacturing plant that was one of the first almost fully robotised lines that input components from suppliers around the world in a fully JIT system, very innovative for the time, but the norm these days. Interestingly IBM was all fully metric by the beginning of the 80s to align with global suppliers, something that took US car manufacturers about another 20 years to achieve.

[morphomeman]

No one seems to worry about quality control in the South Carolina plant, where most BMW SUVs are assembled.
Current 2-series are built in what was formerly East Germany, a backward communist country for forty years.
All the big auto manufacturers assemble their cars in plants all over the world, with parts sourced from other countries. AFAIK, there is no evidence that the country of assembly makes a difference in the quality of the final product for any vehicle.

[caycep]

Originally Posted by Sportstick

Of course. This was also true for my two vehicle programs, except for some occasions when the Mexican built vehicles had superior quality audit scores. The Japanese had the same relative concerns about having a Honda plant in the US (Marysville, Ohio), suffering from the same kind of baseless rants we now encounter about Mexico, until that plant actually outscored comparable Accords imported from Japan. A wide variety of brands have highly successful assembly operations in Mexico.

https://www.marklines.com/en/global/mex

The bottom line remains...the plant and the parts don't know where they are and if the OEM has standardized and repeatable processes and a trained team of operators, preconceived notions about the results being inherently poor in some countries vs. others is simply unfounded bias.

I'm not a supply chain expert, but some manufacturing-focused companies (i.e. well a certain Italian bike parts company, a few other electronics folks) found that it was better to have the prototyping/manufacturing close to the R&D/design. I think ideally that allowed for the designers to look at the parts from the manufacturing or prototyping, and allowed for faster debugging of problems / design iterations.

The further a plant gets from wherever BMW's R&D center is, would that create more issues?

(granted, the exterior design folks are in SoCal so not that far from Mexico...at least depending on how much political road blocks are being thrown up at the border..)

[Sportstick]

Originally Posted by caycep

I'm not a supply chain expert, but some manufacturing-focused companies (i.e. well a certain Italian bike parts company, a few other electronics folks) found that it was better to have the prototyping/manufacturing close to the R&D/design. I think ideally that allowed for the designers to look at the parts from the manufacturing or prototyping, and allowed for faster debugging of problems / design iterations.

The further a plant gets from wherever BMW's R&D center is, would that create more issues?

(granted, the exterior design folks are in SoCal so not that far from Mexico...at least depending on how much political road blocks are being thrown up at the border..)

I understand your point, but this overlooks the pilot plant process and that each part goes through PPAP even earlier after being developed under DFMA with specific anticipation of assembly processes. In our case, we had a pilot plant in proximity to the engineering and design platform teams. The issues you raise are addressed in those nearby pilot operations. Of course, this all happens after all the CAD tools for part design have optimized assembly operations. Once the pilot assembly is validated, the product and process are transferred to an assembly plant. With a Detroit HQ, for example, there is no meaningful difference for a plant in Mexico than in a variety of other locations across the U.S. For BMW, they have also proven this methodology with the previously acknowledged plant in South Carolina. If and when issues do arise in the plant, each plant is staffed with a resident engineering team who report to the home office engineering team and can address issues as quickly as a phone call/webex. With the global array of design, engineering, supply, and assembly, the industry has refined this very complex process quite well.

[MikeT]

With respect to the G42/87, I keep alternating between "not interested" and "well, maybe." With BMW (and pretty much everyone else) going all in with electrics, I'm afraid that the G42/87 could mark the end of an era and might be a last hurrah for the sort of BMWs that I like (i.e., small RWD w/ inline 6).

[Sportstick]

Originally Posted by MikeT

With respect to the G42/87, I keep alternating between "not interested" and "well, maybe." With BMW (and pretty much everyone else) going all in with electrics, I'm afraid that the G42/87 could mark the end of an era and might be a last hurrah for the sort of BMWs that I like (i.e., small RWD w/ inline 6).

I'm not suggesting otherwise, but for those who don't mind a bit more size and doors, this is interesting.

https://www.motortrend.com/news/2022...e-six-details/

[MikeT]

Originally Posted by Sportstick

I'm not suggesting otherwise, but for those who don't mind a bit more size and doors, this is interesting.

https://www.motortrend.com/news/2022...e-six-details/

That's interesting. Thanks. I guess it makes sense that small, nimble players like Mazda may start to move into some of the segments that the bigger players abandon. It strikes me as somewhat bizarre when I hear management of companies like BMW and GM talk about more or less going "all in" with electrics... when like 98% of their current business internal combustion. I know that there's talk about a rapid paradigm shift much like happened in the music and home video industries, but I'm not sold. It was very easy & cheap for people to shift from CDs & DVDs to streaming, but it seems to me that the costs associated with electric vehicles are pretty high for the average person, not only due to direct vehicle expenses but also in terms of inconvenience of recharging, range anxiety/limitations, etc.

[RvR]

Originally Posted by morphomeman

No one seems to worry about quality control in the South Carolina plant, where most BMW SUVs are assembled.
Current 2-series are built in what was formerly East Germany, a backward communist country for forty years.
All the big auto manufacturers assemble their cars in plants all over the world, with parts sourced from other countries. AFAIK, there is no evidence that the country of assembly makes a difference in the quality of the final product for any vehicle.

In the DDR years, under the Soviet boot, yes, eastern Germany didn't fare well. However, after the wall fell they've returned to outstanding work, note all the restarted watch manufacturing in Glashuette (yes, the Germans make watches), most notably A. Lange & Soehne.

Porsche also has a Leipzig plant, not too far from the BMW plant; you wouldn't find those two manufacturers there unless they were sure of getting high quality from it.

I recall reading (going on memory here) that BMW's Leipzig plant has higher measured quality than any of their other German plants. Some of that may be due to the Saxons' long tradition of quality, some due to the 2er being simpler than their other cars. As for SC plant and the X series, I have no interest in suburban activity vehicles, so no comment there.

I do prefer things being made from where they're from, it's a thing of mine. If I want a Yamaha guitar, I want the model made in Hamamatsu, not China. Same goes with BMW. The real deal-breaker for me on the next gen, no I6 with manual transmission; Mexico manufacture isn't a main issue.

As for taking new car delivery in Mexico, no way. Being a tourist driving around in a brand new shiny BMW, oh no. Even in Germany, on my ED, the Bavarian polizei followed me around for 20 minutes. I was told later that it was probably due to them checking for anything with tourist plates to see if it was stolen. There are organized car theft rings operating out of the former Warsaw Pact (e.g., Albania), and new cars on export plates are attractive targets. I know that Porsche employee vehicles have to remain in Germany, Austria, or Switzerland, unless they have special permission, due to insurance requirements. One must also use hotels with 'controlled' parking.

I'd be fine motoring around Mexico in a new Leopard 2A6, but not a BMW.

[MikeT]

Originally Posted by RvR

I'd be fine motoring around Mexico in a new Leopard 2A6, but not a BMW.

[paperkat12]

I'm in the market for a new 2 series either 2021 or 2022 model. Anyone know when BMW typically drops the camo ahead of product launches? Exterior look is a huge factor for me.

[MikeT]

I've read that G42 production begins in August 2021. I'd imagine full reveal at least 2-3 months before that, so May/June-ish?