Toyota, BMW Working On Entry-Level MINI Minor Model
Been waiting for a MINI that actually lives up to its name? Toyota and BMW are working on such a thing, called the Minor.
Automobile Magazine reports the Minor is in the earliest phases of development, and would likely pull its looks from the 2012 Rocketman concept and the current Paceman crossover. Pricing would range between $14,500 and $16,000.
As far as platforms go, the two automakers are going all in on a “bargain basement effort” for the Minor — including a reduction in size and content — instead of using a similarly sized platform like that of the Toyota Aygo, BMW preferring the Minor to not be a badge-engineered product developed and assembled elsewhere.
The new MINI would be one of five new models coming into the portfolio between now and 2018, including an all-new 2016 Countryman and a Superleggera roadster for 2018.
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What kind of awful automatic transmission will they poison this with?
>>Pricing would range between $14,500 and $16,000.
I looked up the Mini and Minor naming. In the intervening years the naming system has been forgotten. "Minor" refers to a larger car (my mum had one). There was never a Mini Minor. The mistake being made here is analogous to naming a BMW the 3-series 5 (and having the car smaller than the standard 3-series. Put another way, the Morris Minor is to the Morris Mini what a 5 is to a 3, namely bigger. I presume they'll rethink this one. Thanks Mr Gordon for pointing this out.
Thanks for that link Allythom. Right. I throw my hands up in the air. On the one side, for most of the time there was a Morris Mini and Morris Minor, two separate cars. For some of the time the marketing geniuses at BMC sold the thing we call the Mini (or Austin 7) as the Morris Mini-Minor. That really makes little sense to me and does seem in itself like a kind of mis-step that is not worth repeating. As I struggle to see it, the BMC people were linking the Mini to the Minor by implying the Mini was a smaller version of the Minor? I can´t fathom this any more than some of the wierd shifts in models and trim variants at GM over the years where the Oldsmobile Bodge gets a trim level called Bodge Elite which then becomes its own car, the Oldsmobile Bodge which is related to a smaller platform than the Olds Bodge or Olds Bodge Elite. I should have stayed away from this one. Except: does Toyota really need to platform share with BMW and does BMW really need to platform share with Toyota? This links across to the thread about when BMW stopped being "cool". Isn´t platform sharing with Toyota the final nail in the coffin of BMW´s image as an elite maker of special cars for the non-mainstream? I shall bury forever my mental image of the BMW as being related to the 1982-1991 E-30 or the 88-96 5-series.