The German job

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The monochrome coachwork couldn't disguise the style notes lifted from the old Mini, however, or the ludicrously wide track that hints at serious cornering power. The cabin looked funky, spacious and tactile for front-seat passengers, but depressing, cramped and cheap in the back (see Inside Job, page 10), so the world record for cramming masochists into a Mini (26 in 1986) seems safe - at least until the MINI-Motorhome derivative appears. There is a hint of desperation in the all-upper-case MINI name, though, and at times its six-year gestation has felt like a parody of a car launch.

Germans doing British heritage to Britons was always going to be an irony-free combination. In 1997, BMW flashed an early prototype of Dave Saddington's new MINI design across a Frankfurt stage to the bizarre accompaniment of Lust for Life, Iggy Pop's paean to advanced drug dependency. Munich suits nodded their heads and tapped their feet.

Today, BMW is trying to create a legend and a kerfuffle for a little car that is a year late - and isn't quite as little, or as cheap, as it should be. In the process, the German car maker is starting to look just a touch too, well, ferventú

Forty-one years ago, on August 26, 1959, journalists were invited to tea, digestive biscuits and a drive in Sir Alec Issigonis's innovative new Mini at Chobham test track in Surrey. (Mary Quant, The Beatles and Harold Macmillan were not there.) At first, Mini was all innovation and substance: a £496 19s 2d price tag, outstanding fuel economy and performance, and the ability to carry four adults and luggage in a car less than 10ft long. Its giant-killing competition performance, classless fun and Sixties style all came later, after BMC had sorted out the seriously leaky cabin, calmed the unofficial strikes at Longbridge's infamous Car Assembly Building 1 and realised the Mini's advanced engineering signified minimal profits.

Today's MINI launch is a "World MINI Tease" tour aimed mainly at venal, publicity-crazed celebrities who, it is hoped, will endorse the car in the pages of colour supplements and personality flick mags. British Leyland tried this in the 1970s with its "Welcome back to a better Mini" ad campaign. It didn't work then, and is unlikely to now.

And the new MINI's press pack is a masterpiece of revisionist history and style over substance. You can get away with this sort of canned "History-Lite" almost everywhere, but not in the country that made the real history. More than one in nine UK drivers has been in a Mini, so we know what we are talking about and we don't need BMW's 21st-century take on the kinky boot by way of an introduction.

The German public hated the idea of Volkswagen's new Beetle ("But the Beetle is for poor people!"), and BMW is going to have an uphill marketing task in the UK if it inspires the same disdain in British drivers.

"I'd really like to see it do well," said one senior Rover insider, "but it will be too expensive to be anything other than a short-term style statement for a few people who change their car like they change their shirts."

BMW admits MINI production will be about 100,000 a year, but it is being coy about the price. The 115bhp, 1.6-litre, 16v Cooper model should be a whisker under £10,000 when it goes on sale next autumn. There will be a more basic and less powerful 1.6-litre model, which will sell for less, and a fire-breathing, 150bhp, supercharged MINI Cooper S that will cost a whole lot more. As for the early talk from BMW of traveller, cabriolet, van and pick-up versions, they seem a long way off.

It was only last week that BMW finished moving the new MINI's production line from Rover Longbridge to Cowley, near Oxford, and the machines still need setting up. And thus far, the Tritec Motors engine plant at Curitiba, Brazil, which BMW shares with DaimlerChrysler, has yet to produce a single MINI engine. Most of these problems are of BMW's own making and are well documented: the optimistic projections of exchange rates that led to the massive accounting losses and the Rover sell-off, and the

arrogance of Munich management who assumed that British car buyers could be told what to buy.

Since the enforced departure of the inspirational Bernd Pischetsrieder (first cousin once removed of Issigonis), BMW has made a habit of tripping over its own shoelaces. The hubris surrounding the MINI's launch is a good example. At first, this was supposed to capitalise on the original's competition successes and was planned to be held at the start of the Monte Carlo Rally - scene of the Mini's famous hat-trick of victories in the hands of Paddy Hopkirk (1964), Timo Mäkinen (1965) and Rauno Aaltonen (1967).

The 3.5m (11.4ft) MINI is ill-suited to modern, production-based stage rallying. As for racing, where the original also earned its spurs, BMW quickly decided the MINI would be uncompetitive against all-comers. It hit upon the idea of running a one-make race series as a curtain-raiser to the Grands Prix it contests with Williams, but then Formula One bosses revealed their asking price: just the £10 million per eventú

And what of those engines? When, at the 1996 Paris show, BMW announced its plan to build an engine in Brazil, in partnership with Chrysler, most questions focused on the future of Rover's innovative K-series engine that, with a different transmission, would have fitted easily under the new MINI's bonnet. Indeed, up to that point, it had been the chosen power unit. What few realised at the time (and BMW didn't admit it) was that dropping the K-series was a political decision. BMW was desperate to sell cars and set up marketing agreements in South America, and the quid pro quo was a major investment, such as an engine plant. So the MINI gets an engine based on a Chrysler design - not the most auspicious start.

It's easy to get misty-eyed about the original Mini, which has sold 5.3 million and ceases production at the end of this month. But it probably never made money for BMC/BL/Austin Rover, and its looks, cheeky roller-skate handling and a starring role in The Italian Job are no substitute for refinement, ride comfort or crash safety.

BMW's engineers and designers have worked hard on the basis forged by Rover's Geoff Upex, Dave Saddington and Chris Lee, and the result is a great-looking, if conventional, Mini replacement. The MINI's underpinnings look good, too, with MacPherson strut front suspension and BMW's space-hungry but effective Z rear axle. The handling ought to be eye-popping and the ride reasonably comfortable, even if getting all the power of the supercharged Cooper S through the front tyres might prove tricky. Ventilated disc/swing caliper brakes with anti-lock will slow it quickly, too, and it would be wrong to write off the Brazilian engines just yet. There will also be Getrag manual, Steptronic CVT and automatic transmissions.

I thought the Cooper version looked really exciting and can't wait to drive it. If only BMW would lighten up a little, stop rewriting history and let the car speak for itself, we might be in for some serious fun.

Andrew English; The Telegraph
Article Date: Sep 12, 2000
Car Accociations: NEW_MINI,
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