Can BMW Fix The Mini Brand, Or Is It Too Late?

Needs a better value proposition by holding or cutting prices and substantially upgrading style, utility and performance for any chance to survive. The market is primed for a low price entry level fun Mini but the brand abandoned that under BMW and now can't go back.

They most decidedly can go back. Call the base Mini the Cooper S and give it a basic turbo engine and drop the price way down to increase value. Create a Mini Cooper T with a fire breathing turbo a the current S base.

Step 1: Close ALL Mini dealers and fold the brand into BMW dealers.
Step 2: Prune the living hell out of the lineup

That is the solution. It would be messy and complicated but that would be the solution if BMWUSA wants Mini to remain in the USA.

The only issue with that is that since there is so much BMW platform sharing, side-by-side customers would alway choose the BMW (X2/X1) over the similar Mini product.

Mini needs to market vehicles where there is no BMW equivalent.

Mini would also not be a bad 'home' for BMW's electric lineup and they could then extend the brand in size on EV platform. BMW is confusing customers with its "i3 / i8" efforts.

Solution - (a) no standalone dealers; (b) no model overlap with BMW; (c) shutdown BMW's pointless "i" efforts and transition EV to Mini.

There should not be any electric BMW's at this point. BMW's electric cars are like a 'George Jetson' trim package with a plug - all blue lights and all. Just pointless.

THey could make a deal with FCA to make the Mini on the same Platform as the Fiat 500.

THat way they would get to take advantage of the improved quality control of FCA production too!

That would be horrific as the Fiat 500 is not only much more unreliable than a Mini is is an extremely poor handler. At one time there was a brief chat between BMW and I believe Hyundai. A Veloster/Mini sharing would work.

Like most European cars, the options add up too fast. Item like navigation should be standard especially if it’s supposed to be a premium brand. Some accessories should be left to the customer to get afterward. And some accessories are just highway robbery, I had an Audi USB lightning cable that was $100+ on the MSRP. It was a nice quality coiled cable with an adjustable plug on the USB end but still...

As we have seen before, you take something that was a very cheap little tiny noisy car for the people and you create an homage that is big, heavy, expensive and trying too hard to be near luxury or chase M cars.

Too late. They can possible convert to electric which might breath some life into the Mini corpse.

Mini should never have been a brand. It should have been the Mini by BMW.

Unless gasoline prices go up to $6.00 a gallon I really do not see how any brand that specializes in smaller cars can make a go of it here. Smart has pulled out. Fiat has become a joke. None of the big three are selling much in the way of sedans let alone small cars anymore. VW cannot sell the Golf. The Honda Civic has become the size of a midsize car from 20 years ago. Mini's time has passed. It needs to fold up and go back to Europe.