A total of 51,299 MINI brand cars were sold between July and September 2005, an increase of 7.5% (third quarter 2004: 47,713 units). 159,413 MINI were delivered to customers during the first nine months, 11.6% ahead of the figure for the same period last year (first nine months 2004: 142,881 units). (MINI PR)
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That factory must be a very busy place!
what i wonder is what factors are contributing to these increases? is it a function of increased production and availability?
I think those of us that want one and don’t care for the way the ’07 is starting to look are jumping on the chance to get an ’06 that we do like. Not to mention that the JCW is now factory installed may help a little.
What I find interesting is that we have seen and read articles regarding how the factory is essentially at capacity. I think I remember reading they added some capacity, but they were still essentially full if I read it correctly.
That said, how does a factory that is maxed out continually put out more volume? Gabe, perhaps my data is incorrect?
GSK… that was kinda my point… from what i understand, every MINI that is made, is pretty much already sold… therefore if capacity is increased, sales would increase as well.
I have said this as well. In a true modeling sense, most likely sales of Minis hasn’t really increased since 2002. What has increased is production and distribution.
Since the plant has been essentially maxed out since 2002 (it has increased incrementally with improvements, but even in 2002, they didn’t think the plant could be making as many as it is now), and a long waiting list (still 3 months in some parts of the country), sales is solely driven by production.
There is no inventory on the lots. If inventory was on the lots as it is in most dealerships, then sales going up would indicate that demand has gone up, which isn’t necessarily true. We cannot say demand has gone up if production is still the bottleneck. In the vaste majority of the cases, the car is sold even before it has begun production. You may see a few Coopers on the lots in a few dealership here and there, but in most cases the cars sit less than a week. The vaste majority are already spoken for, so in essense there really isn’t an “idle” inventory. Ford would literally rise up out of his grave if 80% of their cars were sold and the remaining 20% only sat on the dealers lots for 1 week.
The plant is basically running at full capacity – however “continuous improvement” is a mantra of most good companies; little design changes, small production line tweaks, can all shave some time off the overall production which in turn allows more cars per day.
It is also likely that planned shutdowns (maintenance) are more efficient over time so need less time, leaving more production time.
There’s an old adage, that if you crank up a faster production speed then quality will suffer. I think BMW is going through such pain recently. News has it that BMw wil open new factories in China and India because of the growing economies there.
What the USA needs is a MINI plant of it’s own, maybe next door to the BMW Spartanberg plant.
More factories assembling from CKD packs (completely knocked down kits) for their own markets make more sense than trying to assemble the whole world’s cars out of one plant in Oxford.
Example – VW Beetle old version was assembled in Latin America and Mexico until recently.
And oops… I forgot to mention that old classic Mini was assembled from CKD form in other countries – South Africa, Australia, New Zealand. Back in those days an english assembled car attracted an extra premium.