Quote:
Originally Posted by WULFFZA
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To me, calling the Lime Rock edition a marketing fraud or simply an exploitation for profit, first of all, misses the entire point of the car and, secondly, just isn't supported by the numbers.
At an average price per car of $75,000, the total sales from these 200 cars is going to be around $15,000,000. Total 2011 BMW sales was just under 92 Billion dollars. That means these 200 Limerock cars is probably going to represent about 0.00016 of their 2012 sales. A proverbial drop ( a very small drop) in the BMW bucket.
Do they stand to make a large profit? Not really. Remembering that instead of selling 200 Limerocks at an average cost of 75K, they would be selling 200 ordinary M3s probably at an average cost of 60k. Their increase in profit by selling 200 Limerocks instead of the 200 garden variety M3s is a measly $213,000.00. BMW profit margin for 2011 was 7.1%. (
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/09/bu...-for-2011.html)
There is nothing in the numbers related to these cars to support the conclusion of greed, fraud or exploitation. But, if it's not greed, then what's the motive behind this beast?
The answer, I think, is hidden in the press release. Where it says the car is meant to celebrate the relationship between BMW and Limerock park, what it really should say is: Skip Barber has a solid friendship with a person(s) in the BMW organization and the car is meant to memorialize that friendship. In other words, the car was born from two buddies getting together and having some fun . That's the way I look at it.