Car manufacturers can't keep on with an old design for ever, although Morgan Cars might disagree!

They need to produce a completely new model every five to eight years to take advantage of advances in engineering technology, comply with safety standards and generally keep up with the market. Halfway through the model's life they might introduce a 'mid-life kicker' that involves refreshing several items at once. For the Z3 this was the MY00 introduction in April 1999 with the revised rear end. And smaller changes, such as a new engine, new colors, etc., can happen at any time.

Somewhere in Munich will be an overall 'roadmap' showing the initial planning of models, design iterations, planned start-of-production, marketing launches in different countries, mid-life kickers, and finally a projected end-of-production. Many things need to be coordinated, not just within the Z3 development, but across the ranges. For example you don't normally introduce new models from different ranges at the same time, you want to spread them out to get the maximum marketing advantage.

Getting a new car to market is expensive. One way of reducing the cost is to share the major development cost over several cars all sharing the same platform, much as the Jaguar S-Class underpinnings have been used within Ford for other marques. The original Z3 was supposed to use as much as possible from the BMW 'parts bin' to cut development costs, so was based on the 3 Series Compact platform which, in suspension terms, had lagged behind the saloon version, hence we ended up with quite an old back-end design.

My guess is that first planning of the platform fundamentals such as market positioning, overall dimensions, suspension, engines, etc. might have taken place as early as 1998 (when Rover was still part of BMW), with outline approval by mid 1999. As you will learn later, some of the important development contracts were signed before the end of 1999.

You get an idea of the timelines in the comment below from a manager at FIZ (the BMW Design Centre) in a March 2001 email, "The cars we're working on right now are scheduled for 2004 and 2005. What that means is that the concept and design work for the next generation Z3 is for all intents and purposes completed."

In the run-up to start-of-production, the bodyshop machinery and assembly lines need to be built. That in turn might involve extending the factory so the construction of the new line doesn't interfere with the old. Suppliers need to be selected and given time to make their own production arrangements, then pre-production samples need to be checked. Once everything is ready there needs to be a period of testing and then training before the new production line fires up for real.

To give you of the time this takes, in December 1998 The Other Tom posted to the US Z3 message board, "The first MY00 test cars are coming off the line now... They've closed the plant for tours... don't want anybody to see the MY00s."

Despite the fact this was 'merely' a facelift, it was another four months before the MY00 production line went live in April 1999.

And even then that's not the end of the story. With a completely new model, pre-launch stocks need to be built up so that dealer launch cars (known inside BMW as HEA) can be shipped and to ensure there's sufficient stock for initial demand.

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Copyright Tim Cullis August 2001 and subsequent. All rights reserved