BMW To Invest $400 Million In South Carolina.

In 1992, BMW Manufacturing Corp. broke ground on its South Carolina facility. On its 10-year anniversary of the company's first U.S. assembly plant, BMW said it will invest an additional $400 million in its factory, creating 400 more jobs.

BMW also announced it will establish a $10

million endowment at Clemson University to establish a graduate engineering program that will offer masters and doctoral degrees in automotive engineering. "Our decision to place our U.S. plant in South Carolina has proven to be a successful one as we strive to keep up with customer demand for our X5 sports activity vehicle and begin to build the new Z4 roadster, which will be the third vehicle the factory has manufactured for worldwide distribution," said Dr. Helmut Leube, president of BMW Manufacturing.

"As we look to the future, Clemson's graduate program will create an additional quality source of engineers for BMW as well as the automotive industry, " Leube said. "We are confident that these actions will help assure success tomorrow."

The increased capacity will help achieve the BMW Group's goal of increasing worldwide production from about 1 million to 1.3 million vehicles by 2007.

The Spartanburg County factory is an integral part of BMW's global production network, and in 2001, one out of six BMWs sold throughout the world was produced at the South Carolina facility.

Employment has grown steadily at BMW Manufacturing. When BMW announced it would locate its first full manufacturing facility outside of Germany in South Carolina, the company pledged to employ 2000 associates by the year 2000. BMW employed 3,000 associates by year 2000 and today, more than 4,400 associates work at the Upstate factory.

Vehicle production has also increased to meet growing customer demand. Production has grown from 51,878 units in 1999 to 121,680 vehicles in 2001 with production projected at more than 120,000 units for 2002 and at more than 150,000 units for 2003. Production of the new Z4 roadster began in September and the factory will face a rapid production ramp-up, reaching at least 230 roadsters a day and bringing the total daily production rate to more than 600 by the beginning of 2003.