BMW's new Mini runs into trouble only weeks after British launch

ADVERTISEMENT

BMW already appeared Monday to be experiencing starting problems with its new Mini, barely a month after the car went on sale in Britain and Ireland and just days before its launch in the rest of Europe.

BMW said that it was recalling all 7,000 new Minis it had built so far at its plant in Oxford, England, owing to an electrical fault in the fuel tank.

The car maker attempted to downplay any dangers arising from the fault, which caused static electricity to build up and give rise to localised burning at the mouth of the tank.

Only two incidents had been reported so far, BMW insisted.

And it rejected British media reports claiming the Mini was liable to explode as a result of the fault as "utter rubbish."

The financial damage, too, was limited and the cost of amending the fault would only amount to one million marks (510,000 euros, 462,700 dollars), a spokeswoman for BMW said.

The recall action will not jeopardise the Europe-wide launch of the new Mini at the weekend, she added.

Nevertheless, the announcement will almost certainly cast a shadow over BMW's move into the small-car market and could tarnish the image of the revamped motoring legend.

The Mini was the only element that BMW kept from its disastrous six-year long investment in British car maker Rover.

BMW sold the rest of the company, which lost the German group many billions of pounds, to a British consortium called Phoenix in May 2000 for the symbolic sum of 10 pounds.

The sale drew a line under BMW's attempt to move into the mass market.

Nevertheless, the German maker of top-of-the-range cars hoped the Mini would enable it to enter the small-car market and the Mini's cult status would guarantee the success of the new model.

BMW launched its new Mini in Britain and Ireland in July and the number of cars sold in England so far stands at some 500.

The other 6,500 new Minis affected by the recall had been earmarked for so-called "internal group purposes", which means that they will be offered to BMW employees at a discount, to engineers for further testing and for other marketing purposes, the spokeswoman explained.

The fault had already been fixed in all cars built for the European launch later this month, she added.

BMW hopes to sell some 35,000 new Minis worldwide this year and it is on the basis of this assumption that the car maker expects to lift overall group sales by some nine percent to 900,000 cars in 2001.