Mini Preps Yet Another Mini-Variant, Trying to Avoid Boredom at All Costs
Mini (BAMXY.PK) will have a new concept car at next month's Detroit auto show called the Mini Paceman Concept.
If you're a Mini fan, it's a new model that expands the range and stimulates continued interest in the brand. If you're a skeptic, it's the same old, same old -- another slight variation on a theme and the answer to a question no one's asking.
The Mini brand, which was re-launched in the United States almost 10 years ago, is adding new models to avoid becoming stagnant. The brand hit record U.S. sales of about 54,000 in 2008, thanks in part to rocketing gas prices, but that was two years ago. Mini sales fell 16 percent last year, according to AutoData. They're virtually flat this year, down 1 percent through November to about 41,000.
Mini has to strike an appropriate balance. It's got to produce enough Mini variations to keep people interested, but not so many that people no longer know what the brand stands for. The central fact is, there's really only one basic model, the little Mini Cooper, which is still far and away the brand's biggest seller.
Considering its cars are all based on the one model, Mini has managed to create what's getting to be a really, um, mini-lineup of cars:
- The smallest is the Mini Cooper itself. It's a two-door, which comes as either a hardtop or convertible.
- Next is the slightly longer Mini Cooper Clubman, which has a single half-door behind the passenger's seat that offers access to the back seat, plus additional cargo room.
- The latest variant to go on sale is the Mini Cooper Countryman, a four-door with a rear hatch.
- Besides the Mini Paceman, other cars in the works include a battery powered electric vehicle and a sportier coupe.
Customers can also order sportier versions of the basic models, plus there's also all-wheel drive for the Countryman. Mini talks about all those variants like they're entirely distinct, but the distinctions are pretty fine, at least from outside the brand looking in.
Mini calls the Mini Paceman a "Sport-Activity Coupe." The term conveys sort of a cross between a coupe and an SUV, but it helps to know BMW-speak to know that. BMW (Mini's parent company) can't bear to call its SUVs SUVs, which stands for sport utility vehicle. In light of BMW's sporty image, BMW calls its SUVs "Sport-Activity Vehicles." Active as opposed to utilitarian -- get it?
The auto industry really does waste a lot of brainpower coming up with terms like "Sport-Activity Coupe" that don't really mean anything to anybody outside the industry.
On the other hand, you have to give Mini credit for doing a lot with a little, turning out so many versions of basically just one model. An emotional purchase like a car, and especially a car with an irreverent, nonconformist personality like Mini, can't afford to be boring.
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