BMW Executive Says They Will NEVER Have A Pickup Truck - But Didn't They Say The Same About Turbocharging And Minivans?

When BMW's global sales fall behind Audi's and Mercedes-Benz's and its profitability declines because it incurs enormous costs for all these new models, which don't end up selling nearly as well as BMW is predicting, BMW will continue to sell out.

The "Ultimate Driving Machine" slogan is a thing of the past. Today, BMW is laser-focused on creating a model for every possible niche and appears to care less and less about what made it desirable in the first place.

Is anyone on this thread old enough to remember BMW's marketing material when they waxed poetic about the virtues of normally aspirated engines, and why turbochargers were inferior? Yeah, BMW has changed over the years, and rightfully so. They'd be nowhere if they were still creating the same cars they did back in 1995.

The big take-away from this is that you'll find "purists" who'll condemn BMW for changing, for not being the BMW they once knew and loved. You'll also find a lot of people eagerly snapping up the new BMW vehicles they love, regardless if it's an M3 equivalent, SUV, or minivan-like vehicle. People get what suits them, and rightly or wrongly, today's BMW suits a hell of a lot of people!

Personally, I believe if BMW concluded that the SUV craze is going to be dead in 8 years and 40% of the vehicles on the road would be pickup trucks, then they'd jump on that like a dog on a mailman. Why do you think BMW has done so well with sporty SUVs? They predicted the popularity correctly, and got with that program relatively early. Besides, Mercedes is allegedly working on a pickup truck. If MB proves there's a meaningful market for an MB pickup truck, I can imagine BMW following suit with a more sporting version.

@TheSteve - OMG! You must be the only other person on this planet (other than me) to remember that BMW executives went on record calling turbocharging "cheating and inferior". Also no BMW would ever be AWD or FWD because that is not how a true BMW is built.

My how times have changed but the cockiness is still there.

I imagine we will see a BMW pickup in the works in about 5 years or so. And of course it will be a "revelation" by management.

'009: Yeah, I remember the BMW material about the superiority of pure rear-wheel drive over the alternatives and the importance of 50/50 weight distribution. And all of this talks quietly went away as they adopted the technologies they once flamed.

Was BMW wrong in their earlier claims? I believe it's much more a matter of producing highly desired vehicles, and meeting legislative and regulatory requirements. If the public wants an AWD SUV, then BMW offers a good product to meet that demand. If the public wants more power while legislation or regulation demand lower fuel consumption, it might make more sense to use turbochargers than to try to achieve that through normal aspiration.

And I agree with you about BMW's "discoveries." If they announce a pickup truck for 2020, you can bet their marketing material will say something like, "BMW has achieved what they said couldn't be achieved. We combined the legendary dynamics and performance you expect from a BMW sports sedan, and married it with the pure strength and versatility of open platform transport. BMW has done the impossible, and created a completely new class of vehicle: The Sport Venture Vehicle." It'll be a BMW innovation. It won't be a luxury pickup truck ;-)

Who came first? the MB ML or the X5?, the CLS or the 6GT? the GLS or X7?,in the other side: X6 or GLE Coupe? X4 or CLC Coupe. My point is that if they see profit on the niche , they will build it.

Exactly - but in the "days of old" they were better than that, or so they said.

Now the attitude has changed. Find a market niche and fill it

@TheSteve - Well said my friend.. we are on the same page more often than not.

If MB builds one, BMW will have to.

I am not so sure of that. MB already is one of the worlds leading manufacturers of Class 8 Trucks - the US leader - and BMW does not make such vehicles.

Around the world - the market for Pick-up trucks is generally for ones smaller than the Full Size F/Silverado/Ram we have in the USA. And foreign manufacturers have had only minor success in it.

When did BMW ever say they would not use Turbo charging?

MorePower writes "When did BMW ever say they would not use Turbo charging?"

I don't know if they said they'll NEVER use turbocharging, but when I was shopping for my first BMW in the mid 1990s (a new 3-series), BMW's marketing material waxed poetic about their superiority for employing normally aspirated engines. They derided "inferior" turbochargers for their "inherent deficiencies," such as turbo lag and suboptimal "dynamics," a buzzword BMW likes to throw around regularly, and has been using for decades.

They also waxed poetic about why rear wheel drive is superior, so that's why BMW insisted on employing ONLY the best and most suitable technology. They never said "we'll NEVER employ that inferior all wheel drive or front wheel drive," but it was certainly implied. That was in the 1990s, and possibly earlier (before I got in BMWs).

Today, as we all know, BMW is employing all those technologies they once sited as being inferior.

Personally, I believe BMW could have covered their asses better by using qualified language, such as, "At this time..." or "Today's turbocharging technology does not offer..." At least that way, they could later claim that the huge changes in the technologies they once bashed makes them acceptable or advantageous today. Otherwise, it looks like they were just bashing the other guy (i.e., we don't do turbos so we think they're bad).

Given that the Mercedes will be a horrid Nissan Navara with the Mercedes star tacked on, BMW following suit would be to embrace Mercedes' mediocrity.

MDarringer: I doubt so...In fact most of the times the BMW are behind MB in quality and durability as the consumer reports points.

MDarringer: I doubt so...In fact most of the times the BMW are behind MB in quality and durability as the consumer reports points.

MDarringer: I doubt so...In fact most of the times the BMW are behind MB in quality and durability as the consumer reports points.

Yonder7: When people make statements like yours, about someone being better or worse, ahead or behind, I'm curious about the devil in the details. For example, I saw comparisons between the BMW X3 and Audi Q5 that said the BMW was superior because the Audi's cargo compartment was small. The truth is Audi's cargo capacity is small-ER than the BMW's.. by mere 2%! Wow. The X3 is "superior" because it offers 2% more storage space than the Q5.

A similar story applies to defect numbers. On paper, the differences look huge, as measured by defects per 1000 new vehicles. In reality, it might translate into one brand having a probability of 0.2 more defects in a single vehicle. In the real world, in plain English, this 4 out of 5 new owners of the "inferior" vehicle will have the SAME number of defects as the "superior" vehicle, and one new owner will have 1 (one) defect more in his "inferior" car compared to the "superior" car. Wow. Huge difference, right? (That's sarcasm, by the way).

As they say: There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

TheSteve: You may have some reason because all companies are trying to sale us their products but what I usually see is that the MBs will last 10 to 12 years before you have to do a mayor repair, then BMW lasting 9 to 10 years in average and Audi with 7 to 8. Now I am not telling that based on the consumer reports only but my own experience too. May be I am lucky but I see more old MBs than BMWs on the streets, but of course that might be because MB sales in luxury cars is by far better than BMW. In the other end you can say that there are more old 3s on the stress than Cs (because the 3 sales are higher than those of the C. So final recommendation. If your experience is the best with BMW, stick to them. In my case as long as my experience with MB is excellent, I will continue buying those. By the way, statistics say that the differences in quality between luxury brands, is so small, that only instrumented tests are able to measure those infinitesimal differences..so at the end loyalty will be the main driving point to buy a car, (not a bad thing) we are getting more complex cars now, but also better ones in several features. Finally, BMW did the ugly X6 and now MB is doing the Ugly GLE Coupe, both cars, too expensive to have a big profit margin, but still they are building them, so most likely: If MB does a Pickup, BMW will do the same...even if it is not as profitable as the volume of the 3s.

Yonder7: I've ONLY had first-hand experience with BMW (4 so far). No other luxury brands. My oldest is an 18-year-old 3-series with 180,000 miles. My BMWs have all been good to me, service wise. Friends I know who have BMWs have complained bitterly how their BWMs spend so much time in the shop, usually for electrical problems.

Who to believe? I honestly can't predict the future of any brand of vehicle. I can just tell you my experiences with mine. They were good experiences, but not so powerful as to make me loyal to the BMW brand. I've already ordered by next car, which is a BMW competitor.

TheSteve : In that I agree with you, we can not believe in anyone. If there is money, lies will be present for sure. Also this might sound biased, but deep in my heart I think that most of the current cars are good cars if you do the service and take care of all maintenance on time; that brings to mi mind a young boy with a Lada laughing at me because he spend just 10 dollars in brake pads every 2 years and the overall reliability of the cheap car was excellent, but everything depend of the care and love that you put on your car.

BMW execs would be silly not to consider a mid-size 4-door pickup (similar in basics to the Ridgeline) - which can be offered with a lot of luxury content to easily "overcharge" interested consumers. M-B, I think, has the right idea to think about the 4-dr pickup for a market that would definitely consider a luxury pickup "done right" with all the requisite content to look as "rich" as possible.