They'd have to be - that's the definition of a car made by an accountancy department rather than engineers...
Cars are not made by accountants, you know this.
Still, 4GC makes for a total of about 4% of 3 & 4 sales. 3 saloon makes for a total of about 60%.Actually, you'd be surprised by how untrue that is - people (who largely aren't interested in cars anyway) generally already find car-buying complicated and dislike wider ranges of choice - but even so, they come across as being cars for the sake of cars and a lot of people are put off not only the car but the entire brand - after all, if they can be that cynical for profit in that car, how else are they cynical for profit in the one you were considering?
If there's data to support this I'll accept it, but I'd be surprised. These days customisation and getting things "just-so" seems to be more popular than ever.
Also, can you provide a source for the sales breakdowns? I was monitoring this very closely until BMW decided to cease publishing sales by bodystyle, and I'd love to update my spreadsheets.
The fact is that the 4-door saloon 3 Series already exists. The 4-door coupe 4 Series Gran Coupe is the same car from rubber to roof and almost from front to back - there are tiny differences in the angle of the roof that make for a slightly different shape on the rear quarterlight and angle of the Kink. Even the boot space is identical, though rear headroom is marginally worse - as is the choice of engines...Well, let's be fair. The 4 is now a 4, having previously been called a 3. It's still a 3, just called a 4 to follow BMW's new delineation of saloons and estates (odd numbers) from coupes and convertibles (even numbers). And hatchbacks (odd) and MPVs (even).
4GC is a 5 door, a "fast back" in Rover speak, it's a different proposition to an F30, with a different demographic. The 5 series saloon is closer to the 3 series saloon than the 4GC. 6GC is also the most popular 6-er, despite being closer to the F10 than the 4GC is to the F30.. it works, people like it.. wheres the problem?
If you want to bring up the naming convention for the 2 series Active/Gran Tourer, then I'll totally agree that is an utterly crap boneheaded move, and can only really have been a product of the marketing department aiming for the B-class.
And if it were still called a 3, the 4GC wouldn't exist, because no-one would see the point of the 3GC when the 3 Saloon already exists. It's only possible because someone decided that "4" was now a thing...
And that's a bad thing? at some stage someone had to decide that a Ford GT was a different thing to a Ford Focus, and therefore needed a different name... The 3 series equivalent of the 4GC is the 3GT, it too is a 5 door hatchback... but it leans towards practicality over style.
This is why people don't like it, bring up the "4 door version of a 2 door version of a 4 door car" and think that BMW is no longer about the engineering, instead being run by the accountants. Except people who've worked for BMW, who know that it is.
Again, money plays a pivotal role at BMW just as it does in every single other major manufacturer, to be fair I wouldn't deny that, but the cars are made by engineers, because that's how the real world works, and they are bought by people who have a preference to one thing over another... I fail to see how this is a bad thing.
The models people deliberately call two door sedans are generally a lot more different in shape from contemporary and competing coupe models than this car is from a regular 3 series.
I don't know, the E30 2 door sedan looked more like the the E30 4 door sedan than the F30 4 door sedan did to the F36 5 door hatch back.
