I believe the rather slow sales at MINI dealers all over the country are prompting BMW to cut back production at Oxford. This would also explain why the Clubman will see reduced production slots. BMW will never admit to low sales publicy but all it takes is to visit you local MINI dealer(s) and see their volume of unsold cars.

I applud their decision to cut back production. The MINI will never be a high volume seller car. I can only hope that the current grim financial outlook of world markets will discourage BMW’s quest to put a BMW and a MINI on every driveway. That is Toyota’s and GM’s mission, not BMW’s.

Last year I visited that dealer and they had over 118 R56s catching dust in the street level lot and they had 2 full floors in the garage area accross the street. I was told by higher ups… The car is selling but nowhere as briskly as the previous model. Take that for whatever is worth.

Here in South Florida we have 5 MINI dealers (Soon 6 when the Naples one opens up) and right up to the end of ’06 I do not recall any of them giving special fiancing rates or subsidized lease deals on any R53 inventory. MSRP all the way.

Perhaps your region is different, but down here the 1st gen cars sold fairly well throught their 5 year run. Now days the dealer that I worked for is blasting radio ads for unsold ’07 inventory, something that I never recall happening for the past 6 years.

Times have changed indeed.

Times are certainly changing for MINI since the days they were all sold as soon as they hit the lots.

Dealers in the Midwest US have been running specials on MINI dating back to 2003. In talking with a few of them, they’ve had trouble clearing out the previous year’s inventory for the last two years because they were produced all the way up to December. I’m guessing 2008/2009 will be different.

Yes the design is nice (with lots of design ideas taken straight from the 2001 MINI) but the quality of the plastics and materials in the car is very poor, I don’t think anyone used to MINI standrads of fit and finish would put up with them for very long!

Considering the exchange rate, the MINI is cheaper today than two years ago.

The MINI temp. fans will also be cut and forced to work on production of the smart cars?

Really this is just streamlining the company production.

I am sure, the Fiat 500, and other entries in the MINI’s market segment will force some product revisions sooner than anticipated.

It will be no sooner than planned. The revision had been planned and scheduled before the Fiat 500 was even introduced. Revised vehicles will arrive in late 2009 as 2010 models – exactly three years after the initial lunch as is customary with BMW products.

If you want to hope for something I would suggest hoping that the level of interior quality the Fiat 500 has will inspire BMW bean counters to give more free reign to MINI designers.

No doubt this will halt any plans for an expanded dealer network in the USA – if there were any.

This will not affect plans currently in place to grow the dealer network over the next two years.

Why am I back in the moderation queue?

The current version of wordpress has many different ways of fighting spam. One of them is to automatically move into moderation all comments with large word counts (probably anything over 300 – or roughly a full page). Another thing that may be at play here is that WP looks at each comment’s format and how it aligns with popular comment spam formatting.

Hopefully not, buy the BMW 1-series could spell trouble for MINI sales, especially, fully optioned and JCW Cooper S models.

There will still be a 7 to 10k difference in price between moderately optioned JCW cars at a 135i.

I paid $24150 for my Cooper S in January 2006. A roughly equivalent 2008 Cooper S would be $24950. An a price increase of 3.3 over 2 years. This is roughly half the net average rate of inflation for 2006 and 2007. When you consider it this way, the price increases are quite reasonable.

I think it’s a matter of a price vs. performance gap. There are so many other cars in this market like the tC or the Civic Si or even the Corolla S or Mazda3 that simply have more horsepower than a MINI One would have at that price. The american buyer, in general, is not particularly sophisticated and would look at the MINI One’s diminutive horsepower numbers and probably buy elsewhere – not realizing the handling and character they’re giving up. But at the same time, character isn’t everything. I originally thought about going simple with a Cooper, saving on gas, and enjoying the piece of mind of the simpler engine. That is, until I drove a Cooper S. So were I a new car buyer for whom the MCS was out of my price range, I don’t see myself buying a MINI One when I could just get a tC or a Corolla S, go pretty fast, and still get good gas mileage.

All that is to say is that I think that MINI has drifted slightly north of the pricing sweet spot they were in just two years ago. At the time the MINI was easily the most small car for the money, but I’m not sure that’s as true as it was then. Love ‘em, just can’t quite look at them the same now as when I bought.

I think it’s a matter of a price vs. performance gap. There are so many other cars in this market like the tC or the Civic Si or even the Corolla S or Mazda3 that simply have more horsepower than a MINI One would have at that price. The american buyer, in general, is not particularly sophisticated and would look at the MINI One’s diminutive horsepower numbers and probably buy elsewhere – not realizing the handling and character they’re giving up. But at the same time, character isn’t everything. I originally thought about going simple with a Cooper, saving on gas, and enjoying the piece of mind of the simpler engine. That is, until I drove a Cooper S. So were I a new car buyer for whom the MCS was out of my price range, I don’t see myself buying a MINI One when I could just get a tC or a Corolla S, go pretty fast, and still get good gas mileage.

All that is to say is that I think that MINI has drifted slightly north of the pricing sweet spot they were in just two years ago. At the time the MINI was easily the most small car for the money, but I’m not sure that’s as true as it was then. Love ‘em, just can’t quite look at them the same now as when I bought.

Cutting some temporary jobs to adjust supply for possibly lower demand- and only 3k units across Europe out of a yearly production of over 240k for the world is not a huge difference. Additionally, it’s not stated that the 3k is of any MINI model in particular, maybe they’re cutting Convertible production as the next gen nears production and demand slows- who knows.

MINI is being smart about it. And has been good about holding pricing reasonably steady.

It seems to me some of the initial sales projections for the R56 were a bit optimistic and BMW is quickly taking action to rectify the problem by cutting back production. The worst thing a car manufacturer can do is to churn out cars that no one will ever buy. Witness how Chrysler flooded their US dealership network with unsold new car inventory prior to Mercedes selling the company to Cerberus investments.

The Clubman will already see limited production numbers and dealers will have fewer production slots. Again, this is a wise move. BMW does not want to repeat some of the mistakes they made with the R56 last year. The remaining unsold ’07 inventory must be costing dealerships a fortune and MINIUSA is eager to get rid of the cars by whatever means deemed necessary.

Obviously, this is not the “doom and gloom” scenario for MINI, but given the current climatic situation with world markets, a weakened dollar and more people postponing or indefinetely delaying big ticket purchases, this definetely has to hurt the bottom line, somewhere.

MINI today is facing more fierce competition in its market segment than ever before. 6-7 years ago they owned this market, today they have to share a piece of the pie.

What outcome I would like to see from this situation?

a) Better, more competitive product b) better value for the money. I agree with other posters here that MINI’s are becoming very expensive commodities in their market segment. I paid for my new Clubman S nearly $30K out the door and this is for a car with just a few options and no equipment packages.

3 years ago for my R53, similarly equipped, paid no more than $23K out the door.

Once you hit that price threshold you are placing your product against some serious competition/alternatives.

Hopefully not, buy the BMW 1-series could spell trouble for MINI sales, especially, fully optioned and JCW Cooper S models.

Interesting times ahead.

To me that one thing that MiniUSA has never seemed to jumped on was bringing the entry level Mini One to the states. If you spend anytime reading Mini2 you can see a lot of younger buyers buy into the Mini One with plans to eventually go after a Cooper or Cooper S. To me bringing it to the states at a competitive prices point would give Mini more sales.

The downsizing of the workforce is sad but think Mini is wise to act before getting themselves into a financial bind. The financial markets world wide are looking iffy at best, not preparing for the future can cause huge harm to the business if things go from bad to worse.