MINIUSA Reports 2018 Sales Down 7.3%
It’s official: 2018 wasn’t great but December was downright terrible for MINI USA sales. For the month MINI USA sales totaled 2,797 vehicles, a decrease of 39.3 percent from the 4,611 sold in the same month a year ago. That’s worth pausing in for a moment. Almost 40% down is a huge decrease that was mostly due to smaller MINIs poor showing which were all down over 45%.
Total year sales for the MINI Countryman sport-activity vehicle increased 18.2 percent in 2018 compared with 14,864 sales in 2017. In 2018, MINI USA reported a total of 43,684 vehicles sold, a decrease of 7.3 percent from the 47,105 vehicles sold in 2017.
There was one positive trend – MINI Pre-Owned Vehicles. MINI Certified Pre-Owned sold 988 vehicles in December, an increase of 16.8 percent from December 2017. Total MINI Pre-Owned sold 2,461 vehicles in December, derease of 6.5 percent from December 2017. For the whole of 2018, total MINI Pre-Owned sales increased 4.9 percent compared with 2017.
The current generation of MINIs are the best engineered and most trouble free ever offered and yet they’re simply not finding buyers as they have in the past. We went in depth on this issue and others in our recent conversation with MINI USA head of marketing Pat McKenna. While it’s easy to arm-chair a few hypothesis around why, our interview with Pat actually spells out the issues fairly clearly. You can check out the full interview here.
<p>Few in the public believe that MINIs are reliable nowadays. Their reputation precedes them, and all their marketing efforts ought to work at reeducating the public, or they’re done. Might be too late already.</p>
^ <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0CLdVlJ4eA" rel="nofollow ugc">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0CLdVlJ4eA</a>
<p>It’s official – MINI USA 2018 total sales were the lowest since 2007.</p>
<p>2018 H2 has been challenging for all car makers, not least BMW with total passenger car sales down 4.3% for the year, and X1 sales down 5.7%.</p>
<p>The Countryman, which shares its platform with the X1, by contrast recorded its best annual sales to date, up 18.2%.</p>
<p>The issues with MINI are as follows: poor dealer network, terrible reliability history, expensive to fix, the prices have grown unreasonably high, they don’t look attractive anymore, the engines are inefficient for such small and low-powered cars, they haven’t updated them substantially in almost 6 years, and they don’t even drive like MINIs did when they were first introduced. They can try to blame the move to SUVs as the reason behind their sales slump but it’s not the actual reason. MINI never had 1,000,000 sales per year in America, but what they did have was a loyal customer base that loved the semi-affordable, semi-premium car that blended performance and fuel efficiency in a package that was small. That’s what got me interested in the MINI to begin with. Then they went and ruined it with the F56 and the dominoes have continued to fall ever since. MINI sold more Cooper hardtops alone in 2011 than they have sold of all the models combined this year. People have moved on to Mazda, VW, Mercedes, Audi to fill their need for a premium small car at a reasonable price. As soon as the F56 was released sales immediately fell and never recovered. The visual appeal of the exterior of the F56 was non existent. In fact the front end and bloated rear looked like caricatures of the first two generations. The R56 was the most successful MINI model since the brand was relaunched. If they have any chance of regaining my interest or those that first got excited about MINI, they need to go back to basics and offer what we originally wanted. A handsome, zesty small car that is reasonably priced. To get a MINI Cooper S 2D equipped with features that most cars have standard gets over $35K easily. There’s no reason anyone would want to pay that much for a car of this size when it doesn’t drive well or have something unique. A clean sheet design that mimics the first two generations of cars and brings back the level of performance expected is a necessity. Otherwise I see the MINI brand being killed off very soon. It isn’t hard to make the car drive well. BMW is supposedly bringing back the performance to their own cars so maybe the same will happen to MINI. Fake engine noise, muffled exhaust, super light steering with no feel and the 2.0T’s unwillingness to rev are unacceptable. The old 1.6T was a much better engine for the MINI lineup. It revved to redline with no decrease in oomph, pulled hard from 1000rpm with next to no turbo lag, returned great fuel economy and sounded much better. I hope they can recapture some of that engine’s thrills and distill it into a new engine that is reliable and more fuel efficient than the B48.</p>
<p>OMG PREACH</p>
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<p>One has to feel sorry for the F54 Clubman. For a while in 2016, it was MINI USA’s best selling model but by the year end it was ultimately beaten into first place by the aging, and technically obsolete, R60 Countryman. Sales quickly fell away after the F60 Countryman launch in 2017.</p>
<p>SHARE OF MINI USA TOTAL SALES 2018</p>
<p>F60 Countryman 17,565 = 40.21%
F56 Hardtop 2dr – 9,950 = 22.78%
F55 Hardtop 4dr – 6,450 = 14.76%
F57 Convertible — 5,334 = 12.21%
F54 Clubman —— 4,385 = 10.04%</p>
<p>The F54 Clubman is not a bad car, but it was launched at the wrong time. Just as other car makers were getting out of Wagons and into SAVs, BMW chose to build another MINI Wagon. It backfired spectacularly.</p>
<p>According to sources, BMW will be “reinventing” the next generation Clubman, most likely a MINI equivalent to the X2 but based on the new FAAR Platform that will underpin the all new 1-series 5-door Hatchback to be launched later this year. Hopefully, the next generation MINI 5-door Hatchback will also be built on the same platform.</p>