Yeah, I would say their heritage is performance...specifically sharp handling. They promote their vehicles as "ultimate driving machines." That moniker does not apply to all of their products, anymore. My 5 series does handle well but I was most impressed with the soft ride and how quiet interior was compared to my Continental. Many BMW purists are not so happy with the direction BMW has taken with some of their models. I would not have considered a BMW of 30 or so years ago. My boss had a 7 series back then and it was as harsh riding as a truck.
But I’ve seen dealers use stock prioririties for retail orders. Most often trying to game the ok to buy restriction to get a new model earlier (which is stupid and doesn’t work because they hold all those anyway).
Retail orders use 03-19 priority codes and stock orders 20-80. The scheduling system looks at priority codes first and selects orders with the lowest priority codes first based on commodity constraint compliance. You know better!
When I worked at Ford & Visteon, high volume Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln sedans were considered loss leaders. Profit margins on Ford trucks, vans, and SUVs more than made up for that.
Ford's profit margin on F-Series is much higher than BMW and Benz on sedans and coupes.