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JCL · #10 08-15-2012, 04:23 PM

I have to disagree with my good friend MD.

While I am not particularly supportive of BMW NA sales policies, limiting option combinations does have its basis in engineering design and manufacturing, not just in shaping customer preferences. There is some shaping going on, sure, but there is still a cost to offering additional variants of a product.

If it was just one option, no problem. But if you have 50 options to deal with, that is a lot of variants to build. Each of them has to be confirmed by the engineering team as being plausible (ie, you can have 18" tires with a third row seat but you can't have 18" tires with 19" tires, you can have red or black but not both, you can have sport or regular suspension but not both) and that compatibility table has to be maintained. Apart from the engineering side, parts and service information has to be maintained for all combinations. When we sell assemblies into the automotive business (parts that have been through PPAP) we typically have to ensure that spares are available for 15 years or whatever the OEM specifies. If only a small percentage of people select one option, that is a pretty high support cost amortized over those few purchasers. Then we move to the distribution side of the business instead of the manufacturing end, and we find that each dealer ends up having to stock more models to appeal to the likes of Biff and Buffy who see and like the X5 with the white exterior, and with the red interior, but want a different radio than the one in stock. So the dealer is left with that vehicle in stock, and orders another one. This drives up inventory cost in a business that operates on small single digit margins, at the retail and wholesale ends.

Subway can deal with thousands of combinations because they don't really care if Thai chili hot sauce goes with bbq chicken or not, it is your risk, and because they don't stock sandwiches, just ingredients.

We bought a resale condo, not a new one, but it was a much larger purchase than a vehicle. Three preset colour schemes. Four floor plans Any other changes were the owner's responsibliity post-possession. Every unit has the same range, same fridge, same dishwasher, same shower door, and that has to reduce costs. They presold all of them over a year before construction started, so they seemed to know what they were doing.

By comparison, a car is a small purchase. My car option strategy is to buy a higher line car, with fewer options. You get all the engineering benefits, without padding that goes into high priced options. They are called options because you don't really need them. They are simply more things to break. People have just been conditioned to buy fully loaded as standard practice.

All that said, I like Xenons and would want them. And I special ordered my last four BMWs, to get rid of useless options that I didn't want to pay for or repair, like automatic transmissions. With the 3 series I even got them to build outside the defined package (no sunroof for headroom, no power seats for headroom, but with heated seats that only came in a package with those two). Had to wait months. And there was a priority ordering charge.

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