Business Insight Zone

Today’s Company of the Day is BMW.

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The “Ultimate Driving Machine” gained wide fame in the US during the late 1980s, when yuppies started buying BMWs in large numbers. These days, aging Boomers still like their Beamers, but the appeal of the company’s brands — from the petite and trendy MINI to the grand and timeless Rolls-Royce — is much wider. This decade has been a good one for Bayerische Motoren Werke: its 2006 revenues ($64 billion and change) were nearly twice what the company brought in for the year 2000, and profits nearly quadrupled in the same period. Closer to hand, the company enjoyed excellent August 2007 sales in the US, even though the month saw flat or slightly lower US sales for many car makers including the mighty Toyota.

Going forward, BMW is looking to build on this momentum by introducing more models to compete in niches where it currently has no offerings. The new products will include a compact 1 Series BMW sports coupe and a larger MINI model, which will sell at lower price points than the company’s main 3 Series, 5 Series, and 7 Series sedans. BMW ought to be well attuned to the American market by now: after having imported German-made BMWs to the US for decades, it set up its first foreign production facility, BMW Manufacturing Corporation, in South Carolina in 1992. These days, that unit builds Z4 roadsters and X5 SUVs not just for the US market, but for export around the world.

BMW may have its hands full now that its archrival Daimler has hived off Chrysler. Since that split, Daimler’s stock is up, and optimism abounds among analysts that the maker of Mercedes-Benz will get its luxury-car mojo back. For its part, BMW seems relaxed about this development: it’s predicting even higher sales going forward, and has even floated the idea of creating a fourth brand the place alongside MINI, Rolls-Royce, and the flagship BMW.

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