Hello everyone, my first post here.
I see there is already some rice-hating going on.
But I don't think this car will be priced low enough to attract a lot of ricers anyway. Decently equipped MINI Cooper S can be had for around $25K, so BMW is very unlikely to price the base 1er under $25K.
My optimistic guess is that if the base model is 125i, it could start at as low as $26K. This is because the A3 2.0T, to which it will be very close in HP numbers, starts at little under 26K. Of course BMW usually does charge at least a grand or two more than Audi for competing models, but I'm hoping that the 1er would be priced very aggressively to not repeat the lukewarm sales of the A3.
If the base model is 128i, I doubt it will be below $28K. I don't think the 1 and the 3 will have more than $4K difference engine for engine, and the 328i starts at $32K. Price differential of $4K is of course my pure guess, but it seems reasonable in terms of keeping the 1 not hot enough to steal sales from the 3 but also not grossly overpriced like the A3 3.2 Quattro.