1 What is the core product that the Mini offers compared with the mainstream BMW range?

Why do you think BMW was prepared to invest so much to have the Mini in its range? The original Mini became an icon for the sixties generation, a triumph of its time for innovative style and mechanical engineering. Its owners included The Beatles, Mick Jagger, Peter Sellers and Twiggy and it played a star role with Michael Caine in the movie The Italian Job. As an aside, it also won the Monte Carlo rally three times. At its launch in 1959, however, its creators had no such pretensions or ambitions for the car. It was simply a response to the possibility of petrol rationing. Its fuel economy and a competitive price tag of £497 set it aside from the rest, and it became almost a generic name for small cars.

Although The Beatles’ music and Mick Jagger all survived well beyond the swinging ’60s, by 1972 fashions had changed and the Mini brand was in decline. It increasingly became a small-volume, niche car with a cult following re-living earlier times. An influx of competitive small cars, a shift in consumer preference for more space and comfort, and changing design appreciation meant that the Mini became stuck with being a likeable, but dated brand.

Although the Mini was kept in production, the then owner BL

(British Leyland) was looking for a replacement. Its efforts were not an unqualified success, however. The Mini Metro launched in the 1980s, again an economical, low-priced brand, was again soon left behind by later entrants in terms of quality, design and performance. To succeed in the small car segment requires production efficiency and volume sales along with some distinguishing features. The Metro did not survive the Mini and is best remembered as the car people learned to drive in after the British School of Motoring adopted the brand for its fleet in the 1980s.