BMW’s modern revival of the Mini brand has always struggled to maintain its character while increasing sales on a global scale. As a result, Minis have gotten bigger and less quirky over the years, and our interest has waned. The brand’s current initiative to round out the lineup with a fifth Mini?joining the existing hardtop (two-door and four-door), convertible, Clubman, and Countryman models?provided some hope that the exciting Superleggera sports car or the diminutive Rocketman hatchback could make it to production. But a new report from Autocar quashes that possibility and suggests that the new Mini will be something a lot more conventional: a four-door sedan.
The business case for this move, as proposed to Autocar by vice president of Mini product management Ralph Mahler, is sound, as traditional three-box sedans are popular in key markets such as North America, China, and eastern Europe. The new model reportedly would be based on the Clubman and share that car’s sheetmetal from the B-pillar forward. Autocar even speculates that it could be called the “Riley,” a name that references a three-box version of the Mini called the Riley Elf sold in the 1960s. But while it’s hard to argue with Mahler’s claim that a Mini sedan might have strong sales potential, we can’t help but think that a sedan would further dilute Mini’s identity. Adding a sedan to the lineup just brings Mini one step closer to every other ca...