According to city analysts, the all-new 3rd generation Mini is all set to be built in the Chinese market. A report by Bernstein, an analyst for the China auto industry, stated that the new mini car range and the BMW front-drive sister cars will be made at the BMW’s joint venture Tiexi facility in Shenyang from the year 2015.
Recently in the domestic zone (India), BMW has already started building Mini’s at its Chennai plant. Further adding he stated that BMW has allocated space at Teixi for big expanded production with the new paint shop being much bigger than required for the current production level.
He also stated a number of factors join in building Mini cars. Mainly the demand rose by end of the last year (2012) made China the fourth largest Mini’s global market.
On the official side, small cars manufacturing is easy in terms of quotas as BMW wants to import its bigger and more profitable models in the Chinese market.
For now, Mini’s are built at Oxford and at Magna, Austria under contract. Intensions are on hand to begin at the Old Nedcar facility in Netherlands which was used by Mitsubishi.
The accumulation of Chinese fabrication will most likely be directed at the local zone only.
So we predict after the model launch by the end of the year, a ‘big leap’ will be expected.
A mini 5-door hatchback is also expected to drive the extra production.
As per reports, “The main causes behind this result are understandable: it’s affordable to fabricate cars in the Chinese market, they will be delivered quicker and sales are believed to go up. Whether the vehicles constructed in China will be marketed exclusively to China or internationally, we are not sure up till now.”
At the present time, the company is making MINIs at the Oxford facility located in the United Kingdom, under agreement at Magna (Austria).
