BMW has started producing its 3-series in India

so.

it will be better than building US or China
China will stel design and engineerin
US has poor quality issue

you are welcome to comment what you like, but have you been to india. The workers there are LAZY. People will become very jeleous, very quickly. They wont like the fact that they are building a car for some rich guy. India has problems also. On another note, im glad they are giving those people jobs. I guess a $5 a week job is better than nothing for a lot of them.

this comment is actually in response to indifferent's response... this web site is created to talk about cars and i enjoy reading others comments on cars and such...but how do u go off calling Indians lazy! that is ridiculous and stupid! im an indian and i can tell u that we are not lazy, we are hard workers. no one race should be singled out, especially when this page is about CARS! go autospies!

indifferent...I could go on forever talking about the exploding Indian economy and the work ethic which comes out of it, but I'd rather just keep it simple and say you're an ignorant idiot. I'm not going to get political on autospies, so just stick to horsepower numbers because obviously anything else is way out of your league.

All this racial talk should end right now. Things like this could lead to violence or even death in the real world. Learn to keep your mouth shut about anything racial. Keep comments to yourselves please. Caucasian, Black, Asian, Indian, Native Americans, etc can easily get offended by any comment so let's keep this website strictly about cars and not about humanity and where people are from.

So what? It doesn't matter where 3-series are build as long as they are high-quality.

I'm glad to see that BMW seems to be making some good business decisions. India's GDP growth for the last decade has been second only to China and I'm sure BMW would find many buyers. Also, with India's huge population, labour is not a tremendous problem.

And yes, I have been to India, and yes, there are certain things that are not the most efficient. But one has to realise that India practices extreme capitalism. The rich can get anything they want. So I'm certain both BMW owners and managers would not run into much trouble.

BMW reliability was not the best being built in Germany, now India? Trying to exploit a much cheaper labour force will do wonders for BMW's quality image.

BMW isn't exploiting cheap Indian labor by building cars in India. Indian laws force BMW to manufacture cars in India to sell cars in India. Mercedes-Benz also assembles cars in India for sale in India. India slaps huge tariffs on cars and other products imported into India, that's why very few cars are imported into India. Most of the cars sold in India are built in India by Toyota, Nissan, GM, Ford, Hyundai, Suzuki, Mitsubishi, Honda, Mercedes-Benz. All have manufacturing facilities in India.

With Labour costs at least one fifth those in Germany, BMW will eventually build a large majority of their cars there for export to overseas markets. They of course will Not pass on those cost benefits to the consumer, who will still be paying the same price, but for a substantially cheaper and inferior product.

I fail to see how an Indian product is certain to be inferior.

Have you people been to India. Some of the world smartest enginners come from there. I much prefer having a plant in India, then anywhere else in Asia, Africa or S.America. Go travel a bit. India is the most advanced country in that region. BMW is definatelly making a wise decision.

It's more advanced than several european countries as well.

The engineers are not the ones putting the car together.

India is NOT the best country in the region and no where near the best country in the region..Infact its one of the worst, Indians wish they can get out of india, and thats why you see half of them scatterd across the world, you will need years to reach the level of Japan,Korea or even the UAE...Your people are dying of poverty..

Mercedes-Benz produces just about 2000 cars/year in India.(E,C and S-Class)
In winter 2006 the E-class prduction in Sindelfingen was at maximum capacity.
At that time they produced in 3 days more E-Classes than they produce in India in a whole year(E,C and S-Class combined).
So you can really say that they only produce for the Indian/Asian market in this region.
BMW is now doing the same thing . They want to produce about 1700 cars/year only for the Indian/Asian market.

The problem in India is that in some ways they want to compete with the west(for example computer enginering) but on the other hand they have huge poverty problems among ordinary people.

You should go to India sometime. They don't really have much of a 'must compete with the West' mentality. For some reason, its the West that thinks India is trying to compete with it. Most Indian software engineers don't care a penny if they work for IBM or Infosys (an Indian software firm) as long as their career path seems like it would progress well. The thing is that its a country of a billion people (just like China) and one of the results of that is that people are incredibly competitive. Having lived in India for two years, I can tell you that Indians are not competing with any country what-so-ever. They are just looking out for themselves.

sr15141978 :
I was reffering to politics.

The 3 series is turning into the Camry of luxury cars.

It would be wonderful if the 3 was as popular as the Camry. If I saw 3 Series coupes everywhere, I'd be drooling.

Have they? I thought Audi was only in China.

"The 3 series is turning into the Camry of luxury cars."


now, if ONLY they could match the quality and RELIABILITY of the Camry! ;)

Why not India? They already export a massive number of passenger vehicles - much more than China. Future trend analysts predict most of future car production will be from China, India & the US.

india's Tata Motors is planning a new "peoples' car" expected to sell for $2500.

for comparison, in today's dollars, the 1950s Beetle would cost $11,000, and the Model T $19,000.

don't sell the Indians short.