Just how bad are things at MINI?

At first glance, the story we ran the other day about job losses at MINI was shocking. After all, if the makers of the UK’s lowest depreciating car are having to cut production and lay off staff, then surely the less efficient car makers, with less desirable products, must be facing oblivion.

But that got us thinking. Yes, MINI has been an unqualified success to date, but has BMW actually gone too far with its endless, and some would say pointless and expensive, iterations of the MINI? Will there really be a market for a jacked-up, rufty-tufty MINI crossover? Does paying over £23k for a MINI (the JCW Cabriolet) make any sense at all? And are the MINI’s competitors actually offering a lot more for a lot less?

BMW has pushed the MINI further and further up the price scale with its variations on a theme, to the point where they are going head to head with much better products. But even at its core, MINI is now an expensive option. The super-cool Fiat 500 offers as much, if not more, retro-chic for a lot less money, and new competitors, like the Alfa Romeo MiTo are offering not just more desirable products, but cheaper as well. But instead of reacting to the market changes BMW seems intent on milking the MINI brand for all its worth.

The Mini Cooper Cabriolet JCW -costs an astonishing £23,000

And there are problems with reliability as well. BBC Watchdog reported this week on a long-standing, and potentially dangerous, problem with MINI power steering pumps, something that has been well-known to BMW for some time, but which they’ve done little to address (at least not for those owners suffering the problem, even if they have modified the later cars to eradicate the problem). Do BMW not care about keeping existing customers happy? Don’t they know it costs at least five times as much to get a new customer as it does to keep an existing one? Why aren’t they biting the bullet and fixing, or at least subsidising the fix, on these cars?

The debacle this week with dumping 850 staff without notice has pitted workers/unions against car makers in a way not seen since the BL woes of the ’70s (and whatever BMW say, MINIs are actually made in the old BL factory in Cowley, not in ‘Oxfordshire’ as BMW claim).

But probably the biggest threat to the almost decade long reign of the MINI comes from new cars, in particular the MiTo and the Fiat 500. They offer more for less across their range, and the MiTo has just supplanted the MINI as the UK car with the best residuals.

So what now for MINI? Seems to us that they ought to concentrate on their core values. Value for money motoring in a stylish and affordable package. Get the MINI E out there asap at a bargain price. Introduce a new basic MINI that undercuts the Fiat 500. And care about the customers who fell for what eventually became MINI hype, and they might, just might, be able to put the MINI back at the top of the heap.