Photo: MINI
It’s been on the front pages of automotive websites for months now but we never had official confirmation of the rumor that the Coupe and Roadster MINI models will be put out of production. Today, that moment has come.
Speaking to MINI USA boss, Patrick McKenna at the 2014 Los Angeles Auto Show, Autoguide got a confirmation that the UKL platform won’t be used for the Coupe or Roadster. Basically, they have one remaining year of production and then we’ll have to let them go.
“The Coupe and the Roadster will actually go out of production next year. They’ve run their life cycle,” McKenna said on the event’s floor.
For quite some time, these two models have been criticized by a vast mass of automotive enthusiasts and fans of the brand alike. The main problems differed between the two but were equally important, to say the least.
The Coupe was often criticized for its weird ‘backwards baseball cap’ look and the lack of practicality. It only has two seats and most people complained about that while forgetting that the 3-door hardtop was almost as impractical even though it had a 2+2 configuration.
On the other hand, the Roadster faced different problems. In this case, it was the fact that there already was a Convertible version of the hardtop available that had 4 seats and was sold in a lot more volume. Sure, some people prefer to have only two seats but times are hard and the MINI brand can’t keep making cars for all the niches any more. BMW is doing that for them now.
With this new move, MINI is confirming a change of attitude that was also long rumored that’s called ‘the superhero strategy’ according to McKenna. That means they will focus on higher selling models and leave all sorts of variations to the side. That means the line-up could fall from 8 models to 4 or 5 at the most, a return to the roots as some would call it.
“The Coupe and the Roadster will actually go out of production next year. They’ve run their life cycle,” McKenna said on the event’s floor.
For quite some time, these two models have been criticized by a vast mass of automotive enthusiasts and fans of the brand alike. The main problems differed between the two but were equally important, to say the least.
The Coupe was often criticized for its weird ‘backwards baseball cap’ look and the lack of practicality. It only has two seats and most people complained about that while forgetting that the 3-door hardtop was almost as impractical even though it had a 2+2 configuration.
On the other hand, the Roadster faced different problems. In this case, it was the fact that there already was a Convertible version of the hardtop available that had 4 seats and was sold in a lot more volume. Sure, some people prefer to have only two seats but times are hard and the MINI brand can’t keep making cars for all the niches any more. BMW is doing that for them now.
With this new move, MINI is confirming a change of attitude that was also long rumored that’s called ‘the superhero strategy’ according to McKenna. That means they will focus on higher selling models and leave all sorts of variations to the side. That means the line-up could fall from 8 models to 4 or 5 at the most, a return to the roots as some would call it.
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