Editorial DB - Opinion - BMW 3 Series and Lexus ES

It’s all a blur… what is, you ask? Well, the (thus far) perfectly defined segments in the automotive world. 

Case in point: the grey area that you see highlighted on the cover of this issue. You see, the BMW 3 Series and Lexus ES have historically been in two very different segments. But, with the extended wheelbase 3 (the Gran Limousine), there’s a blurring of the lines – making it very difficult to pigeonhole one or the other.
 
In the past, we all understood our respective place in the world. Your car typically followed your waist size – it went from small to medium to large as you went through life. And if you were lucky, you ended up with a luxury car to show everyone around you that you have well and truly arrived. It was a gradual progression that allowed you (and your peers) to gauge, with certainty, your place in society.
 
Now, you’re all over the place! You’ve tossed tradition into the bin. Your first car is an SUV. Your second – on the back of an “attractive” payment plan – is an extended wheelbase sedan, leaving the rest of us with no way of ascertaining the actual heft of your hip pocket. 

But from the perspective of a carmaker, this merging of the margins is a stroke of genius. 

Take, for instance, SUVs. Everyone wants one. So, everything from a Maruti Brezza to a Mahindra Scorpio to a Lamborghini Urus fall into that classification. And, as far as luxury sedans go, from the rear seat you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between a LWB Mercedes-Benz E-Class and the Three-Pointed Star’s flagship – the venerable S-Class. As a result, the E sells like hotcakes. And what about the S? Well, S-Class buyers are unaffected by mere economics and their purchasing power remains, as they say, inelastic. The “best car in the world” moniker says it all in this rarefied segment.
   
So, what BMW is doing with the 3 GL is taking the E recipe and moving it further downstream. Another stroke of genius? Well, yes. It’ll undoubtedly fly off the shelves in a market like India. But for a 3 Series purist like myself (my two-car garage consists of a 325i from the 90s and a more recent 328i), it appears to be a bit of a sell-out. The “Ultimate Driving Machine,” the founding member of the sports sedan club, has hung up its driving boots in favour of a pair of Oxford dress shoes – which is a shame if you’re fleet footed, but I suppose you’ll find it far more agreeable if you’d rather have the world at your feet…