The Geography of Buying a MINI

With MINI dealers only located in the largest cities around the US there are many of us out there that are having to travel far and wide to find a dealer. This story comes from Business First (a publication out of Louisville). Here's an excerpt:

Since dealerships began selling the new Minis in the United States in March 2002, estimated annual U.S. sales have continued to increase, according to figures from Paul Taylor, chief economist with the National Automobile Dealers Association.

…Michael McHale, communications manager at the Mini USA headquarters in Woodcliff Lake, N.J., estimates that Mini's U.S. sales likely will come in a little lower than that this year, at approximately 30,000 — BMW's allocation level for the United States.

And that allocation to dealers is barely meeting the U.S. consumers' demand.

“We're selling 100 percent of our inventory,” said Ron Choudhury, sales manager for the Mini Store of Cincinnati. “All of the cars on the lot are getting turned every month. By the end of the month, we're empty.”

Since the latter part of last year, the Cincinnati dealership has been selling between 30 and 40 Minis a month, said Bruce Mackey, marketing manager for the Mini Store of Cincinnati.

Choudhury estimates that 35 percent to 45 percent of his business comes from Louisville and Lexington.

To sell the Mini, dealerships had to agree to provide separate floors or showrooms for the Minis that would be independent of their BMW dealerships, McHale said.

“We went to 300-plus BMW dealers and told them what we planned to do and what the investment was for a Mini dealership,” he said. “Of that 300, two-thirds said they were interested in selling it. From that, we whittled it down to 75 dealerships.”

Besides population, the markets for dealerships were chosen based on a basic feel for the types of people who would be interested in buying the Mini, McHale said.

…The reasons for limiting the number of dealers are twofold. BMW officials don't want to saturate the U.S. market with Minis, and its production plant in Oxford, England, can't handle Mini mass production.

“We've chosen to use both of those (factors) to our advantage,” McHale said. “There is always a temptation to sell everything you make and keep making more, but we would rather continue to sell consistently for the next several years.

“We're not really chasing too much growth at this point,” he said. “We would rather keep some momentum.”

This is a solid article and well worth reading the full text if you have time. You can find the original story here.

It's also nice to see something written based on the perspective of an area that doesn't have a MINI dealership. I think those of us in cities with two or more dealerships forget that MINIs are still a fairly rare sighting in the vast majority of the US.