How the SUV drove luxury kings to power - Automotive News
For decades, BMW was a small, purebred sports sedan brand from Bavaria, and was content to stay that way. Then came the transformation into a diverse maker of luxury vehicles with operations around the world -- a transition that began in America and can be pinned down to a specific point in time: It was the moment in 1999 when BMW became a merchant of... BMW is one of three import brands that have climbed to unimagined heights in the U. S. luxury segment during the past two decades -- specifically by embracing the SUV and its modern-day progeny, the crossover. Mercedes-Benz, Lexus and BMW all have crossed the 300,000-sales-a-year threshold in the United States -- leaving most of their luxury rivals far behind -- and operate now at a volume of some premium and mass-market brands, including Buick and... And each of the three brands owes that accomplishment to a decision to go where luxury makers once feared to go -- into what they then perceived as the grubby world of mud-spattered trucks. "It was a very important question for us," recalls Ludwig Willisch, CEO of BMW of North America in Woodcliff Lake, N. J. , 25 miles outside Manhattan. "The concern of my colleagues who were not in favor of it at the time was, how can you be both a BMW and a truck at the same time. When BMW first entertained the idea in 1992, its U. S. sales totaled 65,691. Last year, BMW sold 339,738 vehicles, and a third of them were crossovers. Source: www.autonews.com
