MINI to go maxi

Bigger MINIs will soon be a reality as part of a 12-model range for the world’s most famous small-car name, its boss has hinted.

MINI’s global boss, Dr Kay Segler, last week warned that the enlargement of MINI’s girth might not stop at the engorged Countryman SUV, which weighs almost 200kg more than the MINI hatch, and the new line-up may even include a rear-wheel drive MINI.

“There is no reason why MINIs can’t be bigger than the Countryman is in the future,” Dr Segler said at the MINI Countryman JCW launch in Germany.

“MINI will always be the smallest in the segment, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enter segments with bigger competitors. We will need to, one day.”

Despite criticism of the stretching of the MINI name and the MINI brand into a junior-mid sized SUV, Dr Segler insists that MINI has the right to grow as a brand and not be hemmed in by the size its name implies.

“We have seven models now. If we sit here in 10 years again maybe we have at least 10 models, ideally, and probably one or two more than 10,” he teased.

“A sedan is a substantial idea which could work out, especially for markets like China and the US, and it would not be the first MINI sedan in history.

“There are other ideas too. There is enough flexibility in the UKL (Under Class, the BMW Group’s upcoming front-wheel drive platform) architecture to do 10 models or more, just in MINI.

“There is a huge potential for more models but we should not introduce more than one model a year and the new hatch is due in 2014,” he confirmed.

MINI might hint at five new model styles before 2020, but one car you shouldn’t expect is a MINI around the size of the original, ground-breaking MINI.

Dr Segler firmly hinted MINI wouldn’t be building anything that could slot beneath its current range do to a lack of profitability.

“MINI doesn’t have to mean mini in the normally accepted sense. We did the Rocketman concept car and everybody loved it, but it’s the business case.

“Small cars are expected to be built to lower prices and on the other side are our expectations of what a MINI should be and how much technology and engineering should be in it.  Those two things are in conflict.

“If you have to reduce the price by X-thousand for customers, we can’t reduce the cost X-thousand but maybe 20 per cent of X-thousand. Any price reduction would just mean we have less margin and we don’t have that with larger models,” he explained.

Any expansion of MINI means plugging in to markets where the MINI brand is currently not so strong, and Dr Segler admits he is investigating a rear-drive MINI to be built in Brazil.

Current MINIs are built either in England or, in the case of the Countryman, Austria, but Dr Segler admits an American production facility is becoming increasingly appealing.

“There are talks about production in Brazil but there is nothing fixed. Whatever we build there needs to be suitable to the market in South America.

“We have seen other companies (Audi, for example) build small cars there but for very brief times, so we would look to a bigger model and with rear-wheel drive.

“The challenge is not to rush it (the brand) into too many markets.”

With Audi announcing a new plant in Mexico and Mercedes-Benz and parent company BMW already having production facilities in the US, Dr Segler admits MINI has had pressure to move there, too.

“Brazil would make sense first for us. If we were going to have 600,000-700,000 volumes, there maybe a need to have capacity somewhere in NAFTA but that’s more than 10 years away from being a decision.

“The way car companies do themselves long-term damage is to do one thing and then another and then another and make nervous mistakes that aren’t in the plan.

“The challenge is to not rush it into too many markets, not to rush too many products, not to radically change direction when something isn’t working immediately.

“In Italy, for example, we sell less MINI Coupes than we originally planned because of the economy. We will not react and there will not be a Coupe One, with the smaller, cheaper, slower engine even if the dealers are yelling for it, because it would destroy a lot of hard work and reposition the whole thing with nervous reactions.

“It’s like releasing a genie from a bottle and we can’t put it back. You regret it later.”

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