“BMW is not going to catch a cold with the Mini,” he says. Her claims are backed by Cardiff Business School’s head of automotive economics, Professor Garel Rhys. They claim that as a “fashion” vehicle, the Mini is likely to have a short shelf life and BMW will struggle to make any money from the car.īut Mini’s marketing manager Emma Scammell insists that “the business model set up by BMW will mean it makes money out of the Mini”. One senior industry figure says that, even with the lower price tag, BMW is going to find it difficult to achieve its sales target: “Even if the car is a cracking little product, I think BMW is underestimating the competition, and how fickle consumers can be.”Ĭritics are also astounded that, at a time when most models are updated every two or three years, BMW does not plan to “freshen” the Mini for at least seven years. A Mini Cooper S is planned for next year, but BMW will not confirm its price. BMW has now been forced to rethink, and the basic car – called Mini One – will cost just over £10,000 on the road, rising to £11,600 for the Mini Cooper. With a price tag of £15,000, the Beetle is outside the price range of many people in its target market. Such a move would have repeated the mistake made by Volkswagen when it launched the new Beetle two years ago. The company originally planned to sell the Mini for about £14,000. Rover never recovered and was dubbed “the English Patient” by the media.Įven with the care it is taking this time, some of the industry’s top management say there are flaws in BMW’s plans. Bernd Pischetsrieder, former chairman of BMW, took the stage criticising Rover, casting doubts over its future, and sweeping away the jubilation of the car’s launch. Hopefully, BMW will have learned a lesson from the Rover 75 launch at the Birmingham International Motor Show in 1998. The launch of the new Mini will be the second time the German car company has tried to relaunch a British marque. When BMW finally got rid of Rover last year, it retained the Mini brand, along with the Cowley factory in Oxford, as a memento of what had been a momentous debacle for the company. The new Mini will have to compete not only with mass-market cars such as the Renault Clio, but also with luxury brands like the Mercedes A-Class and the Audi A2. While most critics say the new car – which is half a metre longer than the old Mini – has much going for it, the “supermini” segment of the market is already crowded. The German company, which last year faced a barrage of criticism over its handling of the Rover crisis, has invested £200m in the new Mini, which is to be launched at the beginning of July.Īs the last of the unfinished business from last year’s demerger from Rover, the launch will be closely observed both by the media and rival car companies.īMW has set itself an ambitious target of selling about 20,000 Minis in the UK this year. BMW is preparing to breathe a new lease of life into one of Britain’s most famous motoring icons, the Mini.
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