Quote:
Originally Posted by xlover
I think expectation should be access to the base model will be primarily determined by the market demand for a manual transmission model and probably secondarily driven by overall volume and the need for diversity within the model line (over simplified example, if bmw only plans to sell 10 M3s in your market they probably only need to offer the more expensive comp package to find the 10 buyers, but if they want to sell 100 it is more likely that a buyer might not convert without offering more variation)
The 4 variants that are expected to exist (based on spy shots and actual bmw confirmation)
Base - 6MT (confirmed by BMW)
Base - auto (not mentioned explicitly but test mules matching the configuration are out and about)
Comp package - auto (confirmed by BMW)
Comp package - MxDrive/auto (kinda sorta confirmed by articles written in the pre-prod drives that xdrive will be comp only)
I expect (and my hunch is BMW agrees) that the lions share of sales will come from the comp-auto and comp-xdrive
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Australia actually has the highest penetration of M models in the world (number of M cars sold as a percentage of total BMWs sold).
But very few manuals sold, and they usually only bring in highest spec and make a lot of options (in other markets) standard equipment.