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BMW Manufacturing announced today that production of the new BMW X3 Sports Activity Vehicle got underway at the South Carolina plant.

In early 2008, BMW Group announced that it would invest $750 million in the South Carolina plant, its largest investment in South Carolina to date. This commitment paved the way for construction of a new Assembly Hall built exclusively to produce the BMW X3 along with a significant expansion to the existing Paint Shop. This 1.5 million square foot addition increases the plant's total footprint to over 4.0 million square feet.

“The launch of the new X3 will mark a historic moment for this plant. I am confident that the BMW X3 is once again going to make our plant a leader in the Sports Activity segment,” stated Josef Kerscher, President, BMW Manufacturing Co. in Spartanburg.

Within the last 7 years, the first-generation BMW X3 has been an extraordinary success story for the BMW Group. The BMW X3 began production in 2004. After production of over 600,000 units, the last vehicle of the first model generation, a Vermilion red metallic BMW X3 xDrive35d, came off the line in Austria yesterday.

With the model change, production of the X3 was relocated to the South Carolina plant based on existing manufacturing proficiency of the BMW X5 and X6 models. The US plant has become the expertise center for the BMW X Models. The addition of the third model to the plant's vehicle mix has created several hundred new jobs and increased BMW's total investment in South Carolina to $4.6 billion since 1992.

News and photo used with permission from BMW.