Traditionally, carmakers would sell cars to dealers, and the dealers handled customer relationships, but now manufacturers increasingly sell direct to consumers online. BMW suffered a flurry of incredulous news reports last autumn when it emerged that it was charging a £15 monthly fee to turn on heated seats He became UK chief executive in 2021, overseeing BMW’s fourth-largest market after China, the US and Germany. He worked in managing customer relationships and data at Mini, Rover and MG.īrownridge rose through the BMW ranks via marketing roles, overseeing sponsorship of the London 2012 Olympics (there’s a replica Olympic torch in the corner of the room), before taking charge of the Mini brand.
It felt “very natural” to start work with Land Rover, then under the Rover Group which was, in turn, owned by BMW. “I am fascinated by anything with wheels,” he says. After university, the car industry was the obvious choice. However, his family was always tied to the UK, and he returned for his secondary education. When Chris Patten, last governor of Hong Kong, left on the royal yacht Britannia with the then Prince Charles, it “was quite a sad moment, really”. It was a very different world, with the UK ruling the city state until the handover in 1997. “I’ve very fond memories of a very different culture,” Brownridge says. He was born in Oxford – “close to the Mini factory”, which BMW now owns – but when he was small his family moved to Hong Kong so his engineer father could work on the city’s mass transit system.
“I genuinely think we are on the edge of probably the most exciting time in the industry.”īrownridge is a UK car industry lifer. “Things have changed a lot and are about to change significantly again,” says Brownridge, standing in BMW’s flagship showroom on London’s Park Lane.
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And now the industry is facing an even bigger paradigm shift, with the transition to electric cars in full swing, and newer innovations such as connected and autonomous cars opening the door to different kinds of business. Britons couldn’t get enough of it (low interest rates helped), and BMW rose to become the UK’s fourth-biggest seller of cars, despite the premium price tag of most of its models.
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