Luxury car market is growing more rapidly than ever before with more and more players competing with each other bringing technology and innovations to make these cars more advanced, efficient and value for the money’s worth. BMW is one of the leading luxury car maker not only in India, but globally giving tough competition to two if its closest rivals Mercedes Benz and Audi. BMW has always worked on focussed product categories which include the popular luxury sedan lineup of BMW 3 Series, 5 Series and 7 Series. The sporty M series is more premium for the enthusiastic buyers but the sales volumes are higher for the lower priced cars like 3 and 5 series. There is plenty of cars in this segment to compete with and there is a scope to have one more segment between the 3 and 5 series which BMW also knows of. To fill in the gap, BMW will bring BMW 4 series coupe by 2013 which will compete with cars priced between the 3 and 5 series like the Audi A5 and the likes. The coupe styling will be one of the unique attraction of the 4 series which is expected to attract a lot of enthusiasts and towards it who only had a 6 series BMW coupe as an option before the 4 series.
The 4 series overall dynamics and design is inspired by new generation F30 3 series and the 6 series coupe and it beautifully merges these design cues to attain the 4 series coupe design. The 4 series will be powered by 4 cylinder and 6 cylinder turbocharged engines for different variants keeping in mind the needs of various target customer and target markets across the world. BMW 4 series coupe will be quite sporty in character with an adaptive suspension which can change the driving dynamics of the car by the push of a button by changing the suspension stiffness and settings.
Apart from the 4 Series sedan, a BMW X4 crossover / SUV is also in the making which is also expected to break covers by later 2012 or early 2013. The X4 will fill in the space between the BMW X3 and BMW X5. With the SUV segment growing in terms of sales volumes in several emerging markets, it does make sense to offer more products in the price segment in which the sales are higher so that there are products suiting the needs of more and more buyers which eventually boosts the sales volumes. The competition for the X4 will be compact luxury SUVs like the Evoque by Range Rover and Audi Q6 which is also in the making. It will be interesting to see how the new 4 Series and X4 comes out to be and how the competition evolves in the newly captured price bands.
source – BMW Blog via IAB
