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Mercedes says it's tops in luxury sales for 2012, not BMW

It turns out that Mercedes-Benz North America has legitimate claim to being the top selling luxury nameplate in the US in 2012.
While sources such as Autodata had put BMW in the top spot, registration data from R.L. Polk shows that Mercedes customers registering new vehicles topped the Bavarian automaker in the most recent calendar year. Polk says Benz posted 274,123 registrations, compared with BMW's 268,498.
In terms of sales posted, BMW had bested Benz 281,460 to 274,134. But sales are recorded somewhat inconsistently from automaker to automaker. Some book the sales as soon as they are shipped from factory to dealer. There is perennial gamesmanship between the two German rivals, and the sales numbers suggest that BMW pushed out some extra sheetmetal to dealers in the last four weeks of the year.

BMW i3 configurator is so advanced it's replaced trim levels

BMW's electric i3 is slowly marching its way to dealers. It might not be happening quite fast enough for customers, though. For you anxious individuals, head over to the BMW consumer website and build your ideal i3 in the new configurator.
Before we talk about all the stuff this build tool can do, we need to address the naming of BMW's trim levels for the EV hatchback. The 328i, for example, is available in Sport Line, M Sport Line and Luxury Line. That's good; it makes sense. The i3, though, has Giga World, Tera World and Mega World. Seriously. We've no idea what BMW was thinking when it came up with this (this is the same company that regularly uses the phrase "Sport Activity Vehicle," so...).
Silly names aside, let's try and translate where each trim fits in. The Mega World is the base trim. The Giga, at $1,700, adds stylish leather-and-wool seats in a clean two-tone color scheme, along with 19-inch wheels and a leather-covered IP. The Tera World demands $2,700, but makes up for it with its own 19-inch wheels and a full leather interior. Both lines (worlds?) add satellite radio and eucalyptus wood trim.

BMW matriarch Johanna Quandt dies at 89

Johanna Quandt, matriarch of the family that owns the largest stake in BMW, has died at age 89. One of the world's richest women, Quandt ranked in her own right as the eighth wealthiest individual in Germany, and one of the 100 wealthiest billionaires in the world. Johanna Maria Bruhn was born in June 1926, the daughter of art historians in Berlin. She trained in medical technology before the outbreak of World War II, and after the war worked as a banker's secretary in Cologne. She started working for Herbert Quandt in Bad Homburg, near Frankfurt, in the mid-1950s, and eventually became his personal assistant. They married in 1960, shortly after increasing the family's stake in BMW to 50 percent in order to stave off a takeover attempt by Daimler-Benz. The Quandt family's fortune was controversially amassed during the war. Herbert's father, Gunther Quandt, was a top Nazi-era industrialist named by Adolf Hitler as a Wehrwirtschaftsfuhrer – Leader of the Armament Economy. After Herbert's mother Antonie died, Gunther remarried to Magda, a much younger woman. Following their subsequent divorce, Magda married Nazi master propagandist Joseph Goebbels (with Hitler as best man), and together raised Herbert's half-brother Harald. A recent documentary found that the AFA, the company that the Quandts controlled during WWII, used slave labor provided by the Nazi regime to manufacture battery and munitions for the German war effort. Due to the subhuman living and working conditions, AFA lost approximately 80 forced laborers each month. Despite earlier denial of any wartime wrongdoing, the documentary and ensuing public attention prompted the Quandts to open their books to another investigation that confirmed their wartime activities. The Quandts would later use the capital they amassed to buy BMW, of which they still hold 46.7 percent – the remaining 53.3 percent traded publicly. Following Herbert's death in 1982, Johanna took over 16.7 percent ownership in the company, with their son Stefan Quandt acquiring 17.4 percent and their daughter Susanne Klatten assuming 12.6 percent ownership. Stefan and Susanne, both members of BMW's supervisory board since 1997, are expected to inherit their mother's shares following her passing. Johanna's personal fortune was estimated at nearly $14 billion. Though reclusive from media and public attention, she gave generously to charitable foundations that supported such causes as medical research and business journalism.