Word: minis
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...auto engineer Alec Issigonis sketched a rough design on a restaurant tablecloth of a car destined to become a British motoring icon. That doodle was the prototype for the Mini, the 3m-long, 1.2m-wide engineering feat that became - along with the Volkswagen Beetle and Citröen's 2CV - one of those small cars that inspire both devotion and ridicule. After its 1959 launch, the Mini went on to sell more than 5 million cars over the next four decades, until it became clear the car could not meet stiffened European safety regulations...
...nine months after the last of the originals rolled off the assembly line, a new, improved Mini has been reborn under the ownership of German automaker BMW. It's longer, wider and more solidly built than the original (which wouldn't be hard, given the old Mini was notorious for leaks and a rear-end assembly that often rusted and collapsed). And while the new Mini may not endure for the next 40 years, it may well do something its predecessor never quite achieved: make money for its manufacturer...
...pumped-up Mini debuts July 7 in Britain and cruises into Continental showrooms in September. BMW has high hopes for the ex-cult favorite, now manufactured at a state-of-the-art assembly plant outside Oxford, England. But analysts wonder if the 100,000 to 125,000 Minis that BMW plans to manufacture each year and sell for roughly $14,000 will ultimately justify the $325 million investment the Bavarian carmaker has sunk into the project. "The big question is: Will they ever turn a reasonable profit?" says Jim Collins, automotive analyst at UBS Warburg...
...Garel Rhys, director of the Centre for Automotive Industry Research at the Cardiff Business School, is a little more positive, saying that the Mini's low-volume production is offset by BMW's positioning of it in the upper end of the mini market, against the likes of the Volkswagen Polo and the Peugeot 206, where margins are higher, around 5% to 6%, compared to about 3% in the Mini's previous sales bracket. Still, Rhys notes, "small cars mean small profits...
...Mini general manager Trevor Houghton-Berry insists that not only will the Mini make money in its own right at current production levels, its miserly fuel consumption (15.3 km per liter) will also help BMW meet European 2008 emission standards by taking pressure off the company's larger, more gas-hungry models. "Taken in that context, the Mini plays an important part in the finance strategy of the group," Houghton-Berry says...