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All this talk of model years is basically nothing but this stupid American exceptionalism. The basic processes at BMW have nothing to do with model years. Each year, there are three points at which new products can be introduced. For European plants, those points are the first days of March, July, or November. When you go and buy a car, you just get the model you want, and depending on the specific car's production date, you get certain features or you don't. There's no model year. Even the VIN always has a zero in that position.
Model years only become relevant when BMW sells its products in the markets that actually care about them: US, Canada, China, a few other Asian countries, Middle East, maybe some other places I can't remember. There, all the bureaucracy is built around annual revisions, so what BMW does is just takes the version of the car that will be in effect when the new MY for that model should start, and that's what is sold throughout the year. And sometimes that means delaying the product because if production starts at one of the three available revision dates in the calendar year, but the model year is at a different one of those three dates, it may be easier to wait and not release a new model only to make revisions to it (with all the required paperwork and whatever else NHTSA wants) 4 months later.
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