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Originally Posted by ScottAndrew
Various Japanese-American sedans with MT, for those who want the MT experience.
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Check that. Unless you meant absolute entry level subcompact/compact sedans (which almost no BMW target customer wants), or an Accord (in that case, available with the Turbo engine) or a Mazda 6 (not available with the Turbo engine), or a WRX/STi (which you already mentioned elsewhere) there are none. Specifically there are no midsize sport sedans left in the US with a manual transmission. And there are no sedans with more than four cylinders available with an MT, period. And I should add, these have disappeared because there is no money in them, so pursuant to your later question, this point is academic and not particularly relevant anyway.
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Is it time to carve out a US-only offshoot?
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No. It is time to acknowledge that a large portion of BMW's customers are the type of people who tend to be early adopters of new tech, appreciate that they are therefore ready to make the jump to electric as soon as there are attractive options, and put a sizable portion of future product development expenditure into creating the product these people want.
The Model Y is poised to do to BMW SUV sales what the Model 3 appears to have done to BMW sedan sales. The iX3 can help mitigate, but it's almost two years away, and the lack of a model with range over 300 miles and the (apparent, for now, but this could change) lack of AWD could be deal breakers against the Model Y.
The thing is, BMW is already doing just what I describe in the first paragraph above. However, they got caught off guard by how attracted their particular target customer would be to an affordable electric sport sedan. They are playing catch up now, and it is very difficult to predict how things will further play out over the next decade. Unlike most other manufacturers, BMW's smaller size (relative to a GM, Toyota, or Daimler, I mean) and the nuanced overlap between a BMW customer and target Tesla customer has left them in a very vulnerable place. Creating a new brand specific to the US right now is the last thing they need. What they need is the right product - no one cares what the brand is, nor what you call it, it just needs to be able to distract people from Tesla - and they need it like yesterday.