Mini Cross Concept

First there was the Mini "Mini." Then came the Mini Cabrio. Followed later by an "estate body" version known as the Clubman, which has a very ridiculous single rear passenger door on the "wrong" side of the car for right-hand-drive markets. Now we have another iteration of the Mini - a compact SUV called the Mini Crossover Concept which some call it the Crossman. Production version of the vehicle is expected to be introduced by 2010, under the name Mini Cross.

More pictures at AutoCar.

I wonder how long can BMW keep up with this. The marketing boys at BMW's Mini division have some of the hardest brand management task in the industry. How exactly do you keep what is mainly a single-model brand updated and fresh, when altering the car's iconic and sacred design is not an option? It's fine if you are Volkswagen (Bettle) or Fiat (500 / Cinquecento), who have a very wide line-up of iconic classic models to draw inspiration from.

Cross will be slightly larger than the Clubman.

But a Mini is well, just a Mini. A Mini has to look a certain way, to pay homeage to its illustrious history. Obviously you can't "Bangle-ised" the iconic Mini's design with edgy stylings or BMW's signature "flame-surfacing." So there is very little that can be done to refresh the model. The second generation Mini looks exactly like the previous one, and till today I still find it difficult to tell the two cars apart at a glance. 10 or 20 years down the line, how will the n-th generation Mini look like? The same of course!

But then again, managing an iconic model whose design is too sacred to touch is not exactly an impossible task. The guys at Porsche has shown that it can be done. For over 40 years, the Porsche 911 has maintained basically the same design. And the next n-th generation 911 from 20 years in the future will still look the same, just as they have always been since the 1960s.

The original 1963 901, precussor to the 911. Image from UltimateCarPage


Current 997 generation 911. Image from WorldCarFans. More than 40 years later. Nothing much has changed from the original 901. It's still easily recognisable as a 911.

The last time I check, 911s outsell any other supercars. The trick is to make the brand larger than the car. This was not always the case and definately not easy, as when BMW purchased the Mini brand from its former owner Rover, the Mini brand was less recognised than the Mini car itself.

So what's next after the Cross? A Mini Pickup? The original British Leyland Mini did built one of those models in the 70s.

I found this immaculate example here.

Or how about a stripped down track day only racer, in the spirit of the original Mini Moke? Volume sales is surely out of the question as such a design can never pass any of today's vehicle homologation regulation.

Image from Wikipedia.