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      07-08-2019, 07:41 AM   #18
mkoesel
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Drives: No BMW for now
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Canton, MI

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Quote:
Originally Posted by dakine_surf View Post
I live in the EU part time and It's hard to think of myself as the minority when all I see are 3 pedal cars over here. If they make them for EU, why not let NA customers take ED of manual cars. I get not shipping 3 pedal cars to sit on lots and showrooms, but ordering and taking ED is a different story.
They don't make them for EU. The 330i and M340i aren't available with a manual transmission anywhere in the world, and there are no plans for that to change. And, since the 430i and M440i will use the same drivetrains, the same applies to those products as well.

Furthermore, switching the location of delivery does nothing to change the factors that keep vehicles produced for sale in other countries from being made available to US customers. There are a whole host of differences between a Euro-spec and US-spec vehicle, and there is a cost associated with producing a vehicle that meets regulatory requirements for a specific region of the world. So, for example, even if the 320d were available here in the US, but there was no manual transmission offered as there is in other parts of the world, it would not be possible to simply allow a US customer to take delivery of their car in Europe in order to get a manual transmission.

Finally, while you may see a lot of vehicles with manual transmissions in Europe, when it comes to brand new premium vehicles, manual transmissions are being offered in very few cases. This is not a matter of BMW cutting features, but an industrywide trend that BMW is forced to recognize and acknowledge in order to compete on costs and remain viable. In fact, in the US, BMW's main competitors, Mercedes and Audi, have eliminated the manual transmission entirely while BMW still offers them on select high performance models.
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