BMW Regensburg Plant Just Built Its 9 Millionth Car In 40 Years

BMW has reached another major production milestone in Germany. This time around, the Regensburg plant has built its nine-millionth vehicle. The milestone comes 40 years after production started at the Bavarian facility. This iX1 in an eye-catching color shows how much has changed since the first E30 3 Series rolled off the line in 1986.

The anniversary vehicle is finished in BMW Individual Velvet Orchid II Metallic and was built to customer specifications for a buyer in Sweden. While the iX1 clearly doesn’t have the same historical significance as the second-generation 3 Series, it’s an interesting bookend to four decades of production in Regensburg. When the factory opened in 1986, BMW made 400 cars per day and employed 3,500 people. Fast-forward to 2026, and the numbers are considerably different. Regensburg now employs around 9,000 people and assembles more than 1,400 vehicles every working day. A new car leaves the assembly line every 57 seconds.

The plant also set an annual production record in 2025, building 356,901 vehicles, or 4.2% more than the year before. That makes Regensburg the company’s highest-volume vehicle factory in Europe, comfortably ahead of other German sites such as Dingolfing, Leipzig, and Munich, as well as the newly opened Debrecen site in Hungary.

Regensburg Is Home Of The BMW X1 And X2

The facility currently builds the X1 and X2 with combustion engines, as well as their fully electric iX1 and iX2 counterparts, on the same production line. More than 150,000 of the vehicles built in 2025 were electrified, either pure EVs or the plug-in hybrid X1, since there’s no PHEV X2 in this generation.

BMW reminds us that Regensburg will build a Neue Klasse model later this decade, but once again, it doesn’t reveal its identity. We’d wager the vehicle in question is a next-generation iX1 with a rear-wheel-drive layout, Gen6 motors and batteries, along with the new iDrive X interface. Expect to see it next year alongside an updated X1, but the latter is almost certainly getting a mid-cycle facelift rather than skipping to the next generation.

Big Changes Ahead For Both Models

It’s reasonable to expect the coupe-styled X2 to receive similar updates not long after its conventionally shaped sibling. Although nothing is official, some say the iX2 won’t get the full Neue Klasse makeover but will instead receive the usual LCI treatment, therefore keeping the existing architecture. Be that as it may, the swoopy crossover will embrace the new design language and interior tech.

The revamped compact crossovers are part of BMW’s massive product offensive, with around 40 new/updated vehicles coming by the end of next year. Whether they’re facelifts of next-gen cars, they all get a new look that brings them in line with the iX3. Inside, expect a central touchscreen and the windshield projection borrowed from the larger electric crossover.