San Miguel Asia Carmakers Corporation (SMAC), the new entity that exclusively distributes BMW automobiles and motorcycles in the country has announced their new official prices inclusive of TRAIN. Effective this month, their new price list also lists the two variants (and of course, prices) of the upcoming all-new X3 which is slated to launch on February 9.

Going through the price list, it’s obvious that the arrows point to mostly increases across the BMW line-up. As a company, their SRPs have jumped roughly 7 percent.

Having said that, BMW doesn’t seem to follow the general predicted pricing trend.

While vehicles with a Net Manufacturer’s Selling Price (NSMP) of P 4 million (these are vehicles with an SRP in the P 7 million range) did see increases, vehicles in the same pricing tier as its rival Lexus such as the IS, ES, GS, RC did not follow the predicted drop in price. In fact, models like the 1 Series, 3 Series, X1, and even X4 have all seen increases of about 5 to 10 percent. Whatever the reason, this move threw our predictions off. Compared to an expected decrease on the 3 Series and X1 last December, it went up instead. This meant, we were off 12 percent.

Of course, with BMW now distributed by SMAC, the importer and distributor took this opportunity to trim down their model range compared to 2017. From 33 models and variants during BMW’s tenure with their former distributor, the count is now down to just 24—a 30 percent reduction.

The vast majority of variants trimmed come from “niche” models such as the 1 Series, 2 Series, and 4 Series. Core models such as the 5 Series, 7 Series, and the various X models remain unchanged. The only one that gone pruned is the 3 Series which sees its variant count reduced by half.

Having said that, it’s clear that BMW Philippines is relying on strong sales of its all-new X3. Based on the price list, it will be made available in two variants, the xDrive20d xLine (P 4,390,000) and xDrive20d M Sport (P 4,890,000). More details about the all-new X3 will be released next week.