Insight: the story behind the Mini Remastered
"When the Remastered idea was revealed about six weeks ago, Brown and his small team talked about initial production of about 100 cars a year, a settle-down volume of about 250 and delivery of the first car this November. But by the end of the first day, serious enquiries – some from as far afield as Japan and Australia – had topped 650, and now the number has swelled beyond 2000. The phone rings all the time.
The company’s tiny sales team (comprising people who do other jobs but have had to learn a new skill) has started taking £2000 deposits so those with a particularly severe case of gotta-have-one disease can be on a waiting list. It’s not that the company really wants a waiting list at this stage; more that it’s a way of coping with relentless customer pressure. Brown calls the response “brilliant”, but also knows it’s going to force a re-think of his business model.
Why choose to remake Alec Issigonis’s famous little city car? “We’d been thinking about a new project for quite a while,” says Brown. “It had to be something with a bit of volume attached to it. Remastering and improving a famous British car seemed the most appealing idea. There were some obvious candidates such as the E-type, but the Mini appealed most of all.”
For the big Remastered announcement, Brown and DBA built three prototypes to show off potential themes: a luxurious Monte Carlo, a more basic Club Sport and a traditional Classic, ranging downward in price from £85,000 to £75,000 (before local taxes)."
https://www.autocar....mini-remastered
Edited by mab01uk, 28 May 2017 - 09:50 PM.
