The future of the Mini brand is being radically rethought as its BMW parent makes major changes to its product plans.
Autocar understands that plans for a new fourth-generation Mini have been pushed back and any new model will not appear before 2023. Even the major makeover scheduled for today’s Mini range in late 2019 might be canned as part of BMW’s comprehensive planning overhaul.
One plan for the Oxford-based brand would see BMW and Chinese car maker Great Wall teaming up to engineer a new small front-wheel-drive platform, which would be used for an all-new range of Minis to be launched from 2023.
Sources also say the fourth-generation Mini range is likely to shrink, with an axe hanging over future versions of the cabriolet and the three-door hatchback.
2019 Mini Electric: first official pictures
The dislocation of the Mini brand comes after BMW’s decision to shift production to just two platforms for all of its future models. These have been dubbed FAAR for front-wheel-drive cars and CLAR for rear-wheel-drive ones, as revealed by Autocar in December last year.
This strategic move, say insiders, has left Mini’s future up in the air because the FAAR architecture is too expensive and too big to underpin future Mini models.
As BMW platform strategist Lutz Meyer told Autocar, both the FAAR and CLAR platforms will be engineered to allow vehicles to be produced with internal combustion engines, as plug-in hybrids and as pure- electric models.
The electric motor on the hybrid versions of the new- generation vehicles will drive the axle not powered by the internal combustion engine. This engineering layout means that future BMW plug-in hybrids will be all-wheel drive.
Such a complex ‘multi-fuel’ platform will be more expensive to engineer and produce than today’s rather simpler, front- wheel-drive UKL platform, which underpins the Mini family and BMW models such as the 2 Series Active Tourer and BMW X1.
For BMW, the FAAR and CLAR architectures are essential because it is proving difficult to predict with accuracy future buying patterns and the extent to which drivers will swap to pure- electric vehicles.
As a global brand, BMW also has to cover individual market moves in different countries. For example, China is switching to electric cars at a much faster rate than Western markets.
Furthermore, the Mini brand’s fundamental problem is that it is a relatively small part of the BMW operation. In 2017, the BMW Group sold 2.46 million vehicles. Of that total, Mini accounted for 372,000 units globally — a sixth of the company’s output.
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What a load of drivel, the
What a load of drivel, the MINI Brand is very profitable, it is just BMW trying to squeeze every last penny out of it, and why would they get rid of the best seller 3 Dr hatch, they wont, it is just more tripe the facelift IS goign ahead as planned, and the convertible is also going nowhere, what they need is a small entry level car that brings it back under £10k by the time owners have specced it up (where the vast majority of profits are) it would be yet another huge ncome stream.
But then BMW have never been known to stick to their promises, just look at Rover, only a few weeks before they were launching plans for a new factory, new models and improved profitability, but the pathetic Quandt family were not prepared to wait just one more year when it would all have been done and dusted and the money would have been flowing in.
Dont matter much
BMW have just agreed take up another 25% of China Brilliance (love these querky name in China like BYD etc) and all minis in the future will be built from 2022 in China BREXIT has nothing to do with it but wave bye bye to the mini being constinued there and say Hello to cheap nasty Chineseplastic metal crap replacing it. Volvo are already finding the cost of their own dillying with the Chinese products (and losing 20% of its core life time owners)
5wheels wrote:
Yet more rubbish, Volvo's sales have sky rocketted, so those that dont keep the cars as long as others would be previlant, those that would keep the cars long term are still there, the quality and reliability of teh new products out weigh the old cars hugely, and they were good, and it would be interetsting to know where you get your figures from, MINE come direct from Volvo and via the EUro car sales per country, governemnt sites.
Isnt the brand MINI? I would
Isnt the brand MINI? I would have thought an experienced motoring journalist would be aware of things like that.