Given North America’s rapidly evolving shift toward small, fuel-efficient vehicles, you’d have to reason that things are going pretty well over at BMW’s Mini franchise—and you’d be right. We spent the morning having breakfast with Mini USA vice-president Jim McDowell, and learned a few things about how the company is doing during these belt-tightening times, and how it plans to move forward to capitalize on an increasingly Mini-friendly environment.

Here is what we learned:

• The Mini Clubman represents fully 20 percent of the U.S. model mix, and is performing above expectations in our market.
• The current Mini convertible (still on the first-gen “New Mini” platform) is in its last month of production. We will receive the new model in the spring, with the customer model configurator coming online before then.

• Mini’s original goal when they entered the market in 2002 was to sell 20,000 cars in the first year. They exceeded that mark, and as ofthe close of 2007, they are exceeding their projections by 2.5 times.  Mini’s analysts anticipated five-fold growth in the U.S. small car segment between 2002 and 2010, and if anything, that projection now looks a bit bearish.
• Fully 81 percent of cars sold in July were specified cars—that is, they weren’t picked up off of dealer lots, but custom configured by an individual buyer. The last three months have been Mini’s best ever in the States, but that is unlikely to continue due to supply constraints: the company had but a four day supply of vehicles at the end of June, an unbelievably small amount.
• Recent word of 500 electric Minis coming to the U.S. is accurate (but the announcement caught them "by surprise”) and plans are to have cars in the hands of actual customers “about this time next year.” That said,it isn’t clear whether these cars will be sold, leased, or otherwise disbursed. It is also undetermined whether these cars will be offered outside of California.
• Mini USA is keen to incorporate some of the fuel-saving measures present in Minis in other markets (namely stop-start), but U.S. OBD II (on-board diagnostics) regulations are making this a more difficult process.
• Mini sees its buyers primarily cross-shopping Honda, Volkswagen, Toyota (Prius) and Scion, but a large portion of Mini buyers don’tconsider other vehicles at all.
• Mini presently has 82 dealers in the U.S., more than 50 percent of who are updating their stores (upgrading/enlarging). It expects to have 13-15 new stores open by 2010-2011, some in new markets, some in existing markets where growth warrants a second store.
• There is still no official word on a timetable for the forthcoming Mini softroader. This model will bring Mini’s total offerings to four, but McDowell believes that the Mini brand could accommodate six models without issue.
• U.S. Mini officials “would like to see” a diesel powertrain option in the States that achieves at least 50 miles-per-gallon, but there are no firm plans for anything at this time.

McDowell reiterated several times that Mini has no aspirations to become a genuine high-volume player, and it understands and embraces the idea that it is “Not the best car for most people, but it is the perfect choice for some.” Key challenges for the Mini brand going forward will include improving quality survey scores while maintaining character, as well as securing adequate supplies of cars for this market.