Ring the panic bells. Ferrari’s going hybrid. Now BMW’s going front-wheel drive. Okay, so maybe that’s no real reason to play the doomsday card. It’s just the way it is for automakers these days. Embracing change and all the crap.

Anyway, the break in tradition won’t affect beloved models. Front-wheel drive will be introduced to a new entry-level model to be slotted in beneath the 1-series (pictured) and will be sharing components with the Mini.

This would usher in break from BMW’s tradition of building only rear-wheel and four-wheel drive configurations.

BMW’s looking to increase hardware sharing among its models to bring production costs down. Whether or not these savings will translate to lower-priced Beemers has yet to be seen.

BMW is really trying to dish out some competition for everyone in their market brackets despite the poor showing of auto sales all over the world. BMW, itself, is performing quite poorly these days but that doesn’t stop their research and development boffins to churn out new models.

CAR Magazine reports that BMW is considering giving 5 different variants for the 2011 next-generation 1-Series. The variants would include a 2-door hatch, a 3-door shooting-break (who goes hunting or golfing in a 1-Series?), a 3-door sport wagon, a 3 or 5-door GT1, and a 3-door sport activity coupe.

Now that’s quite the selection of variants to choose from. In a marketing perspective, while this would probably give buyers a huge range of choices, it might just water down the car’s impact to buyers. Why make a 3-door shooting-break 1-Series when another model (say, an X3 or X5) would probably serve those who do sporting activities better.

Source: CAR