My wife’s got the X3; I think it looks okay. I miss the 335i coupe she traded in. But it’s her car and not mine so not really my business. Plus, any car I drive, I can’t see it once I’m inside, so appearance is not a major deal for me in a commuter/daily driver.
I mentioned earlier that I ordered a Subaru from the factory. The factory is in Indiana, so it wasn’t coming from Japan. I don’t know about other Japanese brands, including the ones you mention.
not really, but if you do a “build and price” for any of those makes you’ll find the options list to be extremely sparse.
I custom ordered a BMW earlier this year, to get a combination of options that wasn’t typical. (ie, I wanted some things, not others).
How it worked was that I chose options and negotiated a price. There were none in the region with the colors (I was semi-flexible) and configuration I wanted. I could add or subtract all the options and colors listed on the BMW USA website that weren’t contradictory. Some options require other options, I couldn’t sidestep that, but I didn’t want to.
The dealer’s sales manager was happy to accommodate my request. He explained that their deliveries come in two parts - what BMW makes and sends them that they have no choice over, and configurations they can submit. They have a quota of weekly orders that are put into production of the second type. My order was submitted as one of those. The order was submitted in early February and the car, manufactured in Germany, arrived at the dealer in California at the end of March.
Overall, it was a very satisfactory experience.
A few decades ago I saw a car custom-made for a NY State official: Cadillac, with a continental tire, gold grill?, remote start when that was not heard of, and special paint. He got an extra gallon, at extreme price, in case he got a scratch in the fender.
Yes the big dealers certainly do handle special requests, such as cars made ready to be a taxi.
Its a case of knowing the right person who can get it in as a special order. eg Fleet salesmen may be able to accept a one off for something so simple as paint.
However with modern cars parts of the doors and tailgate trim may be ABS coloured to match external, and they won’t make a trim to match. They may also have an issue with bumper bars due to paint types. Actually you will notice the bumper is the wrong colour, because the priming coat was not correct to achieve that colour. They dont know the correct priming colour to make it work… so you have to cope with mismatched bumpers and other ABS painted to match… a bit rough of a match…
This has happened with bumpers painted at one factory and car painted at another. They end up drifting apart … (match A to B, B to C , C to D, D to E, E to F … A no longer matches F )
If the colour you want is from a car that does not have painted bumper bars that could be a big no , as they have no idea on the bumper colour job.
But here’s the thing: paint’s not simple. A paint shop is setup for a particular car model in mind, and it may have a capacity for eight colors. Those eight colors are all that you can ever possibly have because they each have specific tooling and dispensing systems (tanks, nozzles, hoses, etc.) dedicated to them. It’s not a simple matter to change a painting system to another color.
What about another model’s color? If there’s another model built in the same plant with different color choices, can’t you choose one of that other model’s colors? No, because it’s not a simple or cheap matter to reprogram all of the tooling and automation (robots) the perform the work.
What about designing an eight color system for nine colors? The ninth can be reserved for custom colors. That won’t work, either, because all of the equipment still has to be cleaned and purged (or replaced) between color choices. You’ll end up paying this price for factor labor, and this is a lot more expensive than the $2000 paint job a local body shop can provide. It’s also just not profitable to invest in the extra equipment for the very small percentage of buyers who would be willing to pay for it. The capital costs would have to be amortized amongst all of those buyers, too.
If the factory could do it economically and at a price consumers would accept, it would be an obvious business choice (i.e., it would already be happening). It might become more feasible in the future. For example, spray-on bed liners are now more common.
You got the car in less than eight weeks? That’s very impressive.
Early this year, I was considering a BMW X3 (after I talked myself out of the X5 that was about $20k more than I wanted to spend). The X3 is built in Spartanburg, South Carolina (about two hours from my home in North Georgia) and it was going to take at least 12 weeks if I ordered one. Like you, I wanted a specific color combination and certain options that weren’t very common and skip a few that I didn’t want.
I had a 2012 Mazda CX-9 and wanted to downsize to something smaller and more fuel-efficient as well as a bit more upscale. Discouraged by the wait for a BMW, I set my sights on a Volvo XC60 and couldn’t find one in the color combo I wanted with the features I wanted. Ordering it from the factory in Belgium (it’s not even a real Swede) was going to take 12-14 weeks.
Then I decided to give up on an SUV/CUV altogether because I drove the Volvo S60 and fell in love with it. But once again, ‘the’ car I wanted didn’t exist at any dealer in the U.S. Ordering it would take the same 12-14 weeks as the XC60 because they’re both manufactured in the same factory.
I finally gave in and ordered the S60 but wasn’t happy about the wait. My dealer blew me away when they offered me a 2013 S80 (large sedan) to drive while I was waiting on my order! It was a service loaner that they were ready to retire and sell as a CPO used car, but they were going to let me have it for about three months and put around 3,000 miles on it.
I paid a $1000 deposit on the order, but it was refundable per Georgia law with very few exceptions. They ordered my 2015.5 S60 T6 Platinum in Caspian Blue Metallic with Beechwood Brown Leather and I prepared to wait…
Just under three weeks later, a dealer in Maryland received the exact car I ordered with one minor difference. I only wanted the Heated Front Seats and the car in MD had the full Climate Package (heated front/rear seats, heated steering wheel, heated windshield & washer nozzles) but that was a minor detail. They hadn’t started building my car yet, so my dealer canceled the order after they secured the car from MD via dealer trade.
I still can’t get over how quickly you got your car from Germany. But I’ve always heard that the BMW plant in Munich is a model of efficiency. Which model did you get?
We got our X3 in seven weeks. I think it all depends on the order backlog, if they have any maintenance downtime planned, and how many ‘slots’ that dealer has available.
I just checked emails - the dealership slipped the details for mine in place of another in their next upcoming order (as one they could specify, previously described) the first week of February. He said to expect it to start the next week and to arrive in 8-10 weeks. The car arrived at the dealer on March 27-8, I picked it up on the 29th.
I was very happily surprised. Going on at this time was a West Coast dockworkers strike and they cautioned me that they had experienced some atypical delays because of it. If memory serves, it was resolved in February but there was a backlog of unloaded and delayed ships up and down the coast that needed to be cleared to catch up. My car came through the BMW facility at Port Hueneme/Oxnard, Cal. It’s a small port, maybe it wasn’t as affected as severely as were LA/Long Beach and Oakland.
I got a 528 - fantastic car, I’m very happy with it. The buying experience was superb. I didn’t even have to put down a deposit.
It was made in Dingolfing, a small town with a big BMW facility about 100 km outside of Munich. I’ve taken a BMW “factory tour” and museum visit in Munich twice, most recently about 16 years ago, I’m not sure if that facility is still active. It was very German, that’s for sure.
Dingolfing was BMW’s largest and most productive factory until 2014. Production increases on several vehicles made in Spartanburg, SC made it the highest production BMW factory in the world. The addition of the 7-seat X7 in early 2017 (as a 2018 model) will add another 45k units to the SC factory’s output. They already exceed 450,000 units per year.
The Dingolfing factory produced over 369,000 units in 2014. They make the 3-series GT, 4-series Gran Coupe (my personal favorite), 5-series sedan & GT, M5 sedan, 6-series/M6 Coupe, Convertible and Gran Coupe variants and 7-series.
The Munich factory still produces the 3-series Sedan and Touring (wagon) and 4-series Coupe. They also produce engines and other major components for various models.
You mentioned going on the factory tour in Munich years ago. If you ever have the opportunity, I highly recommend touring the Spartanburg, SC plant! The employees refer to it as the “X-plant” because they build the X3, X4, X5, X6 and soon the X7. I was fascinated by it and I have toured the plants of eight other automakers over the years. Prior to seeing the BMW facility, the Honda factory in Marysville, Ohio was by far the most efficient, innovative and seemless production system I had ever seen. But BMW seemed much more organized, spotless and ‘minimal’. No clutter anywhere, even on the assembly line work stations and the quality testing they perform is very impressive.
I actually toured the Mercedes-Benz factory in Vance (Tuscaloosa), Alabama just last week. I was very disappointed in the overall experience, the condition of the factory and the production process when compared to BMW. I’ve never been a huge M-B fan anyway, but this only reinforced my apathy.
Since my tour of the BMW X-plant late last year, they have added a combo walking factory tour followed by a tram tour of various parts of the campus. My travel/tour buddy and I are planning to go back to do the new tour in a month or two.
It is located in the middle of nowhere, but it’s only a two hour drive from Atlanta.
Another reason for the delay was because they were still trying to fill dealer orders for the newly-released Xi 4. The X3 and X4 are built on the same assembly lines. A lot of those dealers probably regret ordering those X4s now. I just checked and YTD sales of the X3 (thru July) is 15,623 units but only 3,553 X4s have been sold in that same period.
The formula that worked to create the X6 from the X5 did NOT do the same when making the X4 from the X3. The X4 looks like an X3 with the back 1/3 of a Pontiac Aztek welded on. The wheel openings are also too large and they look especially bad on models with the standard 18" wheels. I had an X4 as a rental (not a good sign when a new luxury model ends up in rental fleets) back in May. It White with Beige interior, basic wheels and the only option on the entire car was Heated Front Seats. Since it didn’t have the X-line or Luxury Line package found on almost every X3/X4, it had black moulding surrounding the windows instaead of chrome. Against the stark white and with the homely styling and ugly wheels, it was the least appealing BMW I’ve ever seen or driven.
The X3 loses 1.7" of rear headroom and the same amount of rear legroom compared to the X3. More significantly, it loses 13.9 cubic feet of cargo space due to the sloping rear window and roof-line. It doesn’t look nearly as good as the X3 and it costs $4,800 more than an identically equipped X3. I can’t imagine why it isn’t selling well??? At least the X6 is arguably more stylish and muscular-looking than the X5 it is based on. I haven’t heard anyone refer to the X4 as stylish or attractive. One of the auto mags made a joke that it was one of few cars in history that looked better with the car cover ON all the time! =)