Thoughts about Mini dealerships back when

[BruceK]

In the thread about old Mini advertisements, a US magazine print ad from about 1963 noted the Mini was available at over 1,000 Austin dealerships in the US and Canada.  And that kind of got me thinking...

It's commonly accepted that about 10,000 Minis were sold in the US from late 1959 to the end of 1967 when importation stopped.  Of the 1,000 dealerships in the US and Canada, we might assume there were 900 Austin/MG dealerships in the US selling the cars (with maybe 100 dealerships in Canada at the peak).  That means the average Mini sales numbers per dealership were pitifully small.  That's 10,000 Minis divided by 900 dealerships equals about 11 Minis sold per dealer — over the entire course of 7 years!  That's an average of 1.5 Minis sold per year by each dealer!!!   

Of course some dealers probably didn't sell any Minis. And some dealers maybe sold hundreds.  Hypothetically, let's say there were only 100 Austin dealers who sold those 10,000 Minis. That would be 100 cars for each dealer over the course of time the car was imported to the US.  Then take those 100 Minis and average them over the seven years they were imported, and that's still just 14 Minis sold by a dealership per year, or just a little over one per month.

It's kind of a wonder any were sold at all.   And yeah, I realize many of those weren't car dealerships in the modern sense of a big standalone building surrounded by a parking lot full of new car inventory.  Instead, probably a lot of them were simply a "foreign car" (as they used to call imported cars) independent repair shop that could also sell BMC cars or Peugeots or Saabs or whatever, as a sort of side business.  So it's not like they lived or died on whether or not someone bought a Mini.  But 10,000 cars over seven years is so minuscule.  For comparison, the first generation Mustang sold over 1.2 million cars in just 2 1/2 years.  It's really a wonder that so many Mk I Minis have survived in the US.

[bikewiz]

It doesn't suprise me the numbers are so low.

But who won the war? The Germans with the Beetle or the British with the mini.

I have a deep seated hate for the Beetle, too many cold New England mornings pushing a dead bug to get it started then driving in the same car with barely any heat and scrapping the frost off the inside of the windshield. I could have been driving in a car with front wheel drive, the optional heater, and a 12v charging system!

In most respects a mini is a superior design but poor build quality, service, and marketing doomed it in this country and they ended importation before the gas crisis of the '70's when it would have been great.

I think I read a quote somewhere, paraphrasing "The Beetle, poor general design built by fanatics to a high standard. The mini, brilliant design built by angry drunks so it barely worked"

[MiniDave]

"The Beetle, poor general design built by fanatics to a high standard. The Mini, brilliant design built by angry drunks so it barely worked"

Love this quote - and it seems pretty accurate.....but I can't say our cars were any better.

Most of those Brit car dealerships also sold pretty much all makes/models of them.....I know our dealerships (we had 2, one in mid town and one in north KC) sold everything - Jags, Triumphs, MGs, Morris Minors, you name it - even Fiats and Renaults. But I don't remember seeing very many Minis around town. I had one and Bob Hindson used to race them so he drove one, but I can't remember seeing another.....even tho anecdotally I know there were probably a dozen or more based on folks I've talked to who had them here in the past.

The one dealer held on selling them till the bitter end - in the 80's - and then continued servicing them till he closed the dealership down sometime in the 90's. He'd been a dealer since the early 50's, and had they built better, more modern cars he'd have carried on with them, I'm sure.

Speaking of Foreign car dealerships, KC used to be a terrific Euro imports town. We had 2 Ferrari dealerships for chrisake! We had Maserati, Citroen, Rolls, Renault, 2 SAAB dealers, 2 Brit car dealers, 3 Fiat dealers - one paired with Ferrari, one sold with Brit cars - Volvo. In fact, at one time the BMW dealer also sold Borgward! Mercedes had two (still does) BMW of course, I think we had 5 or 6 VW dealers in the whole metro area. I mean we had a really strong import system - we also had 2 or 3 parts houses dedicated to imports only.

Now we have one dealer with Mercedes, Porsche, Maserati, Range Rover and Smart - till MBZ stopped selling them here. Lots of Japanese car dealers of course. One Volvo, one Mazda, 2 Audi, 2 BMW, several Toyota and Lexus, 1 Infiniti (no idea how they're still in business), 1 Subaru and that's about it. Almost all of the domestic dealers have consolidated or been bought up by these mega dealer groups, so while it seems like there are a lot of car dealerships in town (KC is a pretty major sized metro area - not as big as Dallas or Chicago etc but about 2 million people last I heard) but nothing like when I was growing up and they were everywhere!

One last thought - are we headed for something like the late 1920's? Seems similar - things are priced SO high these days - there are $100K Jeeps and Escalades - not to mention Teslas, Mercs, Porsches and the like. Seems like we are rapidly heading towards a real split between "affordable" and mega expensive cars, with little in between.

[ve9aa]

I am in NB, Canada (a pretty small and sparsely populated area compared to anywhere on the East Coast of the USA)

I was only 16-17 at the time, but recall in 1981 (or maybe it was a little later...82?) that plenty of Minis were being sold in Canada.

They were not as popular as Beetles though.  That said, they certainly were not rare by any means.  Even today if I take my car out, I'll have some 40 or 50yr old tell me...."Oh my Aunt had one, or my Mom had one."  I know growing up in my subdivision of maybe 300(?) houses there were probably 4 or 5 Minis.

I don't know where I am going with this post other than to say I wonder how many Minis were sold in Canada between 1967 and 1981/82 (or whatever year they cut us off)

As an aside, I don't recall (in those days) seeing a MOKE, a Clubman, a pickup and I'd have to really strain my brain to say whether I ever saw a LWB wagon/van, but if so, exceeedingly rare for sure.

I wish I had known there'd be a test ~42yrs later.....I might have paid more attention.

As a separate aside, one of the reasons I wanted a Mini, was in 1981 I had a cr@ppy job pumping gas at the top of a hill and on a lot of big snow days, my sh!tty Beetle could not make the hill, so a coworker with a 1980 Mini (with bodykit!) would pick me up and we'd plow snow the whole way, often passing 2WD trucks and many RWD cars.

There weren't too many front wheel drive cars then. Some Honda's and maybe the Plymouth Horizon (what a shed!)

Good thread !

[MiniDave]

I had a Beetle in cold Colorado - I found the key to getting heat in the car in town (same with my later 914) was to downshift a gear....run in third even when you could run in 4th.

Tho I seriously doubt if it matters anymore as the only people who still have Beetles probably don't get them out of the garage in winter!

That said, my Beetle did great in snow - but so did my Mini, even with boat trailer tires on it!  ;D

[ve9aa]

I had a Beetle in cold Colorado - I found the key to getting heat in the car in town (same with my later 914) was to downshift a gear....run in third even when you could run in 4th.

Tho I seriously doubt if it matters anymore as the only people who still have Beetles probably don't get them out of the garage in winter!

That said, my Beetle did great in snow - but so did my Mini, even with boat trailer tires on it!  ;D

It's highly probable that as a poor 16/17 yr old my Beetle probably had uber cr@ppy tires on it.
I also vividly recall it sat very low in the rear end.  Any more than a few inches of heavy wet white stuff and I was done like dinner...dragging the rear end around like a dog with an itchy butt.

I'd go out to the apt bldg parking lot with a hair dryer (all apt parking spots had a 120v plug-in, in those days) defrost the windshield, warm up the car (such as it was) and then frantically scrape the whole way to work.  My under-bonnet, gas heater did not work.

Probably one of the worst cars I ever owned.  A few years and cars later, met a girl and her Dad promptly bought her a refurbished Beetle. (groan!)....Even that car broke down on my first day of work (elsewhere) and I showed up 15mins late and got fired on the spot ! (double groan)

There were lots of Minis here in Canada, especially the mid to late 1970's.  I think Quebec and BC got the lions share of them.
  I was too young to pay attention to details (and no internet then) but I'd wager we got tons more than you fellas got just in the intervening years...1967-1982 (or whatever the cutoff year to Canada was).....Fugly bumpers  :-\ and all !

[94touring]

Most people take the heater boxes off bugs/buses whenever they start upgrades. My Brazilian bus never had any of the heat system installed from the factory!

[MiniDave]

Could be that since it had a non-working gas heater the heater boxes were rotted out too. BTW, those gas heaters worked great - instant heat as soon as you turned it on!

And I thought what the US did to the bumpers on our cars in the 70's and 80's was pretty bad, but what Canada did to the poor Mini was way worse!  ::)

[ve9aa]

Could be that since it had a non-working gas heater the heater boxes were rotted out too. BTW, those gas heaters worked great - instant heat as soon as you turned it on!

And I thought what the US did to the bumpers on our cars in the 70's and 80's was pretty bad, but what Canada did to the poor Mini was way worse!  ::)

But dang, it gave us Canadians the sense of being darn near invincible with those HD Fugly bumpers and oversized signal lights, I tell ya. 

(I have no idea what the bleep the CDN gov't was thinking.  "We" did that to several other otherwise normal cars too.)

[tmsmini]

The SF Bay Area had a dealer in every town almost. I had written many numbers in the front of a manual that is now falling apart. The whole Bay Area was one area code back then.

I am surprised Sunnyvale BMC is not written down as they had a person who knew Minis and they were open a half day on Saturday.
I also bought stuff on rare occasion from Huffaker in San Rafael when no BMC place had items in stock.
This would have been 1971-72