[hinckley]

Originally Posted by ND40oz

The in-person experience isn't really an extra expense for the program, it's all the logistics that have to go along with it. BMW is still doing Welt delivery for their German customers and it's done by the same people that do the actual deliveries for the ED program. With the old bread and butter 3er not being able to do it anymore and their current best selling vehicles being built in the US, the volume is no longer there for it to make sense.

^^This. I think that many Americans don't realize that many Europeans take delivery of their cars at the Welt and simply drive them home. And as you say, that program is handled by the same people and the same logistics as the American ED program. But BMW does have the extra cost of plates, insurance and inland third-party transport for our ED program. And those are real, hard costs.

I also agree that the loss of the bread-and-butter 3er was probably the death knell for ED. Although I'll bet that ED was skewed to higher-income owners of more expensive models, losing the 3 (and all the X models) was probably more than a declining program could overcome.