The New Mini Countryman Needs to Be Mini’s Porsche Cayenne Moment

It’s official: The BMW-ification of Mini is complete. The cheeky, premium small cars have shared platforms and engines with their Bavarian cousins for the last decade. Now, the all-new Mini Countryman is the German-British brand’s first car to be made in Germany. Mini announced the start of Countryman production with a press release Monday, and since 2018, parent company BMW has invested some €700 million upgrading the Leipzig plant where the Countryman is now built. 

The previous Countryman was built under contract in the Netherlands, while other Minis have been assembled in Oxford, England. The upcoming electric Mini Cooper E and SE will be built in China through a partnership with Spotlight Automotive, as well as in the U.K. to avoid steep tariffs for some markets.

BMW is betting big on the Countryman's success. It's the largest Mini ever, and it has a more squared-off aesthetic plus a choice of ICE mild-hybrid (including a JCW model) and electric variants on the same platform. By literally growing the brand, Mini hopes to reach new audiences and secure its future. Right now, it doesn’t sell enough cars to be a mainstream make, and isn’t oddball enough for the cult following that originally embraced it. The Countryman hopes to change that, and there’s a precedent here.

21 years ago, Porsche was in a tough spot, too. It was respected as a sports car maker and motorsport competitor, sure, but it needed to find profits, and fast. Enter the Cayenne, Porsche’s answer to the SUV boom—and its entry into the United States' most lucrative automotive segment.

People derided the first-gen Cayenne and BMW X5 as dilutions of what made their brands special. But in reality, they made fairly specialized brands relevant to more people—and provided the cash for them to plow deeper into the hardcore sports cars we love. Today, SUVs make up over half of Porsche's sales, and they're two-thirds of BMW's. Like Porsche’s GT cars? They wouldn’t exist without Cayenne sales. Ditto with BMW’s 1M, M2, and M5 CS, which wouldn't be possible without X3 and X5 sales. 

Mini has an opportunity here: Go unabashedly big and capture market share with the new Countryman, then bring some of the