Electric scooter to complement MINI range

NEW MINI COUNTRYMAN, E-SCOOTER

It's enough to bring out the latent Clarkson in any motoring journalist, the news that Mini is to parade yet another change to its acquired classic brand.

Hard to believe that BMW has owned MINI for ten years now, though not hard to understand what a success they have made of the marque.

A total of 142,529 MINI have been delivered worldwide since January as BMW's continued growth across all sectors continues. The mix of brands works, with the acquired MINI and Rolls Royce serving as an effective complement to the core BMW products, and the company has established itself as the best-selling premium car brand worldwide.

NEW MINI COUNTRYMAN, E-SCOOTER

Of all cars, the original Mini exudes Britishness, indeed is synonymous with Britishness amongst international buyers.

This is precisely why BMW was so keen to acquire the brand in the first place of course, acquiring a car tied into a national concept of cool which would be surprising to many who actually live here, a nostalgia for Carnaby Street and the optimistic early 1960s, of the Beatles and George Best. All these cultural indicators - Britishness as aspiration, quirky and traditional yet somehow radical at the same time - got rolled into the one car, packaged and ready for export.

No matter that the delicacy of the original Alex Issigonis design has been lost, indeed subverted. A man whose design mentality did not include luxury - he once said 'I would like people to sit on nails, to be extremely uncomfortable all the time' - would be ill at ease with the options packages available on BMW's MINI, and even less comfortable with BMW's latest take on the Mini project, the Countryman.

The Countryman is the sort of bloated car one can only surmise was designed with the US market in mind, something attached to an idea of luxury and capacity which is itself now surely becoming outmoded.

And how confused BMW are is evidenced by their stated commitment, publicised in the same week as the Countryman, to the MINI E-Scooter. This wholly electric scooter is designed along the same pastiche-British lines as the rest of the MINI range and is described by Wallpaper* as 'pitched at image-conscious commuters, unwilling to sacrifice style on their daily slog'.

The new man in charge of design at MINI, Adrian van Hooydonk, has described his aim as making the moped 'premium and emotional'. This modern marketing vocabulary may grate, but it shows BMW continue to stoke the fires of the traditional automotive market whilst at the same time innovating wildly, one eye on the past and one on the future.

They say the mark of a true artist is to be able to state two contradictory positions and be absolutely committed to both. BMW seem to have got this down to a tee.