Stefanie Wurst's Mini Rakes in Big Profits, Promises Wave of New Vehicles
Mini once changed the world. Now it’s helping change BMW Group.
In 1959 Mini changed the world. The Mini’s innovative design, the result of an inspired decision by chief engineer Alec Issigonis to mount its engine transversely across the front of the car and send drive to the front wheels, pioneered the layout used by most of today’s mainstream cars and SUVs. In 2024 Mini isn’t changing the world. But it’s helping change BMW, says Mini’s head of brand, Stefanie Wurst.
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“BMW is testing things with Mini,” says Wurst. “Mini acts as a front-runner,” she says. “And if Mini can do it, then BMW may eventually.” One example: Mini is trialing a direct-to-customer sales model in Europe that’s being closely watched by senior executives at BMW Group headquarters in Munich.
Mini is also where BMW is nurturing a new generation of executives for roles across BMW Group, says Wurst, who took over the Mini division in February 2022 after almost three-and-a-half years as CEO of BMW’s operation in the Netherlands. “Mini is a playground, but in the best sense, for developing people,” she says.
And critically, Mini is leading the way in terms of BMW Group’s transition to EVs. “Electric vehicles are 15.6 percent of our sales now, which is a higher share than the BMW Group,” says Wurst. As Mini rolls out its all-new EV range, with electric-powered versions of the new Cooper hatchback and the Aceman compact EV crossover soon joining the new electric-powered Countryman, she expects that share to grow 10 percentage points this year alone.
“We haven’t yet introduced an electric Mini in China, where the market share of EVs is high and demand is high,” Wurst says. “With the launch of electric-powered Minis in China, and in Japan, which is another big Mini market, our share will automatically increase.” Against that background, Wurst predicts EVs will account for more than 50 percent of Mini’s total sales five years from now.
Mini was one of the few success stories from BMW’s otherwise disastrous acquisition of Britain’s Rover Group in 1994. After ailing, dysfunctional Rover began to suck increasingly larger sums of money from an increasingly alarmed BMW, Munich sold Land Rover to Ford for just under $3 billion in March 2000, and off-loaded the rest of the company to a consortium of British businessmen for a nominal $15, throwing in a $650 million interest-free loan to sweeten the deal. But it kept Mini.
The first BMW-developed Mini, codenamed R50, was the first Mini in history not based on the 1959 original. Launched in 2001 it proved an immediate success. With American designer Frank Stephenson’s affectionate reinterpretation of classic Mini design cues combined with a chassis that offered pin-sharp handling and marketing that was fresh and fun, it proved a hit.
Stephenson’s two-door Mini hatch morphed over the years into a two-door wagon, a four-door hatch, a convertible, a coupe and roadster, and four-door and two-door crossovers. Not all were successful—the coupe and roadster models lasted barely three years, and who remembers the Mini Paceman? But Stefanie Wurst says Mini’s profit margin is today higher than that of BMW or even Rolls-Royce, with the U.S. being the brand’s single most profitable market, thanks to strong demand for highly specified versions such as the go-fast John Cooper Works models.
Mini sales last year totaled almost 300,000 vehicles. But there’s more to come, Wurst says. In fact, the Mini boss believes the all-new Mini lineup headlined by the recently launched ICE and EV versions of the Countryman – “our biggest new product offensive in history” – will boost sales to half a million vehicles a year over the next few years.
That lineup will include the new Mini Cooper S, powered by a 201 horsepower 2.0-liter four-cylinder gas engine and the Cooper C, which has a 154 hp 1.5-liter three-cylinder engine under its stubby hood. Both these two-door hatches will be joined by the Cooper C Convertible and Cooper S Convertible in the fall, and four-door hatch variants of the Cooper C and Cooper S are scheduled to debut in 2025.
Coming hard on the heels of the electric-powered Countryman SE ALL4, which we have driven, and which goes on sale in the U.S. this fall, are the electric-powered Mini Cooper E and Cooper SE two-door hatches, first drives of which are weeks away. They will be followed mid-year by the Aceman, the compact four-door EV crossover. Like the electric-powered Coopers, the Aceman will be available with a choice of two powertrains with different power and torque outputs.
The electric-powered Coopers, codenamed J01, and the Aceman, codenamed J05, are built on an all-new EV platform co-developed with Chinese automaker Great Wall. The Great Wall joint venture was struck to reduce the cost of the small ICE and EV Minis by having the car manufactured in China (the new Countryman, the biggest Mini in history, shares its platform with BMW’s X1 and X2 SUVs to reduce costs).
It has been an interesting learning experience, says Wurst. “The DNA of the car was defined by us. The things that define the brand are 100 percent BMW Group. But we learned a lot.” And the biggest learning for BMW? How quickly the Chinese can get a vehicle into production. “In the end we are German engineers, and we want everything to be perfect,” smiles Wurst. “But then we realized we didn’t need all the elaborate processes we have built up over 100 years to ramp up production. We learned a simpler and faster way to manufacture a car.”
One of the key changes: Where BMW manufacturing engineers once tested tooling before committing to production, it now uses tools made straight from the computer aided design process. “The engineers realized that we met our quality targets without this test production step,” Wurst says.
Only one-in-six Mini owners considered a BMW when deciding what to buy. Do models like the Mini Countryman, which shares its key dimensions with BMW’s X1 and X2 SUVs, threaten that dynamic? “In the past we lost some customers because the Countryman was too small,” Wurst admits. “But our customers have a different mindset. It’s less about biological age than wanting to feel young, and in many western markets it’s also about being a free spirit—you define yourself not through your bank account but other things in life.”
Is there room for that Mini brand expression across other vehicle formats? “I think the Mini brand is so strong it can carry a lot of things,” says Wurst, “and I am very open to other formats, but at BMW everything has to have a business case.” Is the new Countryman as big as a Mini is ever going to get? “I think so for the moment,” smiles Wurst. “We are trying a lot of things, but for the moment this is the max.”
One new model the Mini boss will hint at, however, is a new electric-powered Mini Convertible. That’s because a recent limited run of 999 convertible versions of the outgoing electric-powered Mini created for the European market sold out within days, despite a price tag equivalent to $65,000. And she had big plans for the John Cooper Works performance brand, which will embrace the EV Minis as well as the ICE models.
Ask Stefanie Wurst what she thinks is Mini’s biggest challenge going forward and her response is quick, and to the point. “It’s our mindset,” she says. “We are a small brand in a big group. Mini can do a big jump, but not if we keep on planning as we do. We have to stop thinking of ourselves as a small brand. We are a brand of small cars, but we are not small. We are mighty.”
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t fascinated by cars. My father was a mechanic, and some of my earliest memories are of handing him wrenches as he worked to turn a succession of down-at-heel secondhand cars into reliable family transportation. Later, when I was about 12, I’d be allowed to back the Valiant station wagon out onto the street and drive it around to the front of the house to wash it. We had the cleanest Valiant in the world.
I got my driver’s license exactly three months after my 16th birthday in a Series II Land Rover, ex-Australian Army with no synchro on first or second and about a million miles on the clock. “Pass your test in that,” said Dad, “and you’ll be able to drive anything.” He was right. Nearly four decades later I’ve driven everything from a Bugatti Veyron to a Volvo 18-wheeler, on roads and tracks all over the world. Very few people get the opportunity to parlay their passion into a career. I’m one of those fortunate few.
I started editing my local car club magazine, partly because no-one else would do it, and partly because I’d sold my rally car to get the deposit for my first house, and wanted to stay involved in the sport. Then one day someone handed me a free local sports paper and said they might want car stuff in it. I rang the editor and to my surprise she said yes. There was no pay, but I did get press passes, which meant I got into the races for free. And meet real automotive journalists in the pressroom. And watch and learn.
It’s been a helluva ride ever since. I’ve written about everything from Formula 1 to Sprint Car racing; from new cars and trucks to wild street machines and multi-million dollar classics; from global industry trends to secondhand car dealers. I’ve done automotive TV shows and radio shows, and helped create automotive websites, iMags and mobile apps. I’ve been the editor-in-chief of leading automotive media brands in Australia, Great Britain, and the United States. And I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. The longer I’m in this business the more astonished I am these fiendishly complicated devices we call automobiles get made at all, and how accomplished they have become at doing what they’re designed to do. I believe all new cars should be great, and I’m disappointed when they’re not. Over the years I’ve come to realize cars are the result of a complex interaction of people, politics and process, which is why they’re all different. And why they continue to fascinate me.Read More
