ASH said:
How quickly was the X1 facelifted?
Wikipedia puts says production started in 2009 and the facelift has just come a few months ago:thumbs:
Crash_Nemesis said:
BMW generally facelift their cars every 3 years. The F20 1 series is getting a facelift after 1 year mostly because as Hugo_Za pointed out, it was not widely well received and did look out of place. Funny thing is, it has grown on me, even though I hated it at first when it was released.
Power will be the same, its just the lights and bumpers that usually change on the models.
So.. that means it should have been facelifted a year ago as production started in 2011.
It needs to be taken into account that a facelifted vehicle needs to be designed and tested and there needs to be a change over at the factory. In europe this change over just takes place during their summer. where a lot of their factory workers on are vacation (sort of like. S.A. in the dec/jan period.)
There are also the scales of profitability. Simply put a part such as a headlight needs to be manufactured X amount of times, dividing the development and manufacturing among a certain number of cars to ensure every part is built at a certain cost.
In the case of the previous 1 series the benefit of introducing a coupe and convertible at a later staged allowed them to facelift the car earlier and use a better standard of interior primarily (exterior changes were quite small but I'm fairly sure they shared of lot of parts for the front of the car like the kidney grilles and headlights)
which was more expensive to make, but was able to spread the cost over the new coupe and convertible as well as remaining hatch sales.
So, I'm of the opinion that the F20/F21 also has what I think is a very good quality interior because it is also part sharing with 3 series models as well as the upcoming 2 series coupe and convertible.
Also if you have a look at sales figures for May for 2013 in S.A, the BMW sold 487 1 series. The A3 only sold 375 and they have the benefit of a completely new model line up (excluding the convertible, but I don't think bmw are selling many coupes or convertibles right now either. The new S3 isnt available yet, either but I don't think that will sell in high volumes), with no stock shortages.
Mercedes sold 223 A classes, but they have major stock shortages so its not a good reflection of what sales it can achieve. So even in our relatively small market, I don't believe the 1 series is underachieving
Facelifting a car early is only a last resort as is facelifting it extensively. audi follow roughly the same formula as bmw. Mercedes on the other hand seem to facelift their cars very extensively and launch and market them hard to gain a second wind of sales.
It's a different business model as especially top end models seem to stagnant sales wise, one could assume anybody who wanted one would have already bought one, and they don't want to buy another one, they want something different.
Attractive finances schemes also don't work as well on more expensive cars. Especially as they tend to depreciate more (compare a 7 series to a 3 series)
