Jump to content
Create New...
  • William Maley
    William Maley

    Mini May Allow Their Stand Alone Dealers To Move In with BMW

      But not every Mini dealer has a BMW dealer

    Mini has been struggling in the U.S. for the past few as more consumers shun small cars. The brand which expected annual sales to total 100,000 vehicles by 2017, peaked at about 66,500 models in 2013 according to Automotive News. Sales through the first ten months of the years have totaled 37,359. This isn't good news for the 127 standalone Mini dealers in the U.S. as it makes it tough for owners to justify the investment. In 2016, 45 percent of Mini dealers reported being unprofitable. A year later, that number rose to 54 percent.

    "As a dealer and a manufacturer you have a vision of where the brand is going, and you have to prepare for it. In this case, the vision now isn't what it was when some of these stores were built," explained Jason Willis, a member of the Mini National Dealer Council and general manager of fixed operations at Willis Auto Campus in Des Moines, Iowa.

    Mini's parent company, BMW is considering various options to help improve profitability. One of the options on the table is allowing dealers to integrate Mini into their BMW stores. To make sure the brands stand apart, Mini is looking into having a separate showroom with dedicated employees for sales and service.

    "We've given a lot of flexibility for the dealers to present ideas. This is to help make sure that, until our next wave of product, and the market becomes more favorable, our dealers each remain a strong and going concern," said Thomas Felbermair, vice president of Mini Region Americas.

    But there comes an issue with this idea. Mini has 31 dealers that don't have a BMW dealership that they can integrate into. A spokesman for Mini said they "are looking at additional forms of support for stores that remain fully exclusive," but didn't expand into how they plan on doing that.

    Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)

    User Feedback

    Recommended Comments

    57 minutes ago, riviera74 said:

    No need to have Mini in the USA.  It belongs in Europe.  Nobody here likes small cars.

    Let me correct that for you, a very small select group of people like mini. The majority of Americans want something much bigger.

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites



    Join the conversation

    You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
    Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

    Guest
    Add a comment...

    ×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

      Only 75 emoji are allowed.

    ×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

    ×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

    ×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


  • google-news-icon.png



  • google-news-icon.png

  • Subscribe to Cheers & Gears

    Cheers and Gears Logo

    Since 2001 we've brought you real content and honest opinions, not AI-generated stuff with no feeling or opinions influenced by the manufacturers.

    Please consider subscribing. Subscriptions can be as little as $1.75 a month, and a paid subscription drops most ads.*
     

    You can view subscription options here.

    *a very limited number of ads contain special coupon deals for our members and will show

  • Similar Content

  • Posts

    • I hate to say stuff like this, but you can profile people fairly easily.  A certain emboldened member with a smaller view of the world used to get on my case about this ... go see the world and learn to make inferences.  At any rate, I was boarding a plane in Jacksonville and, in front of me, was a guy with a baseball cap and all I could see was the rear camo effect.  When he got up, I saw Trump 2024.  I felt like saying something to him, along the lines of how is it that the most conservative people support the most depraved individual.  I thought I should skip it since I didn't want to end up in an argument and on a "do not fly" list for some airline.  He was white with salt and pepper hair but had that Charles Bronson brow.  So, you know ... ex-military, high paying trades, utilities, government job ... or alligator trapper.  For all these so-called conservative people, we've never had a first lady (lower case in her case) where you're a "k**t hair" away from seeing the R/X rated stuff.  I'm originally from SoCal and NOTHING shocks me, but that and the whole circus of everyone involved - extended family, loyal friends - is over the line for me for the job at hand. Houston is not my favorite place.  However, I handle it much better than Dallas or San Antonio, which don't interest me.  I don't like their interior location and the brushy looking mesquite.  Houston has a distinct and attractive downtown.  There's the Space Center.  There are the museums, of which MFAH is free one day of the week.  There's Galveston, and even if the not the nicest beach, water can be so therapeutic, just watching the cruise ships or freight ships come and go.  Lastly, there are some beautiful neighborhoods, with newer homes in the darker red brick, completely hidden under a pine canopy, which is never the case in other big Texas cities.  It reminds of Atlanta, which I very much liked.  So, between that, and the welcoming and freewheeling people, I can hang in H-town for a while and find new indie coffeehouses and eateries.  There's so much food and it's easy to gain weight there.  I agree ... I hate Orlando FL ... a bad knock-off of Las Vegas and Las Vegas is already bad. I've never been to Hawai'i and Alaska.  I'm not so sure I'm interested.  If I have to fly that far, I'll just cross a pond.  I also have an issue with Hawaiians since some of the locals of Samoan stock have issues with "haolis," having heard this from white folks I knew who moved there and then came back because of the passive-aggressive discrimination.  The only states I have never set foot in are a cluster in the middle and they're not that pressing for me - ND, SD, Nebraska, and Montana.  So, I'm at 44 of them and that's good enough for now.
    • Watching "The Hunger Games" why do I feel we are going down a dark path?
    • The question I am hearing from more and more Americans: "Can we RECALL the President and VP?" Sadly, NO is the answer. It would take a motion to add to our constitution to allow a recall of the folks as even the Senate and House members are protected with no way to recall them either.  Interesting is that most states have in their constitution the ability to recall state politicians including the Governor that has happened in a few states over the last Century. Most recent was California.
  • Who's Online (See full list)

  • My Clubs

×
×
  • Create New...

Hey there, we noticed you're using an ad-blocker. We're a small site that is supported by ads or subscriptions. We rely on these to pay for server costs and vehicle reviews.  Please consider whitelisting us in your ad-blocker, or if you really like what you see, you can pick up one of our subscriptions for just $1.75 a month or $15 a year. It may not seem like a lot, but it goes a long way to help support real, honest content, that isn't generated by an AI bot.

See you out there.

Drew
Editor-in-Chief

Write what you are looking for and press enter or click the search icon to begin your search