The future does not look bright for the two-seat Mini Coupe, which looks like a Mini Cooper wearing a backwards baseball cap for some reason, or its hatless brother the Mini Roadster. Will anyone miss them? I'm thinking they won't.
As you have no doubt heard by now, an all-new Mini Cooper is on its way, and Mini expects to launch several new models based on it and another architecture over the next few years. Just don't expect the Coupe and Roadster to be among them, according to a report in Australia's carsales.com.au.
Instead, the report says that the two will be replaced "by a machine that looks like a stand-alone sports car" based on the next Mini's front-wheel drive platform.
It sounds like it could be a more fully-realized version of what Mini was trying to do with the Coupe and Roadster in the first place. Supposedly, it will have a sleeker, lower body, and use many interior cues from the Mini Vision design concept.
You can't really blame Mini for wanting to kill the Coupe and Roadster. As Downshift Autos noted recently, sales for both were decent in their first month, and they've been in the toilet ever since. Why would anyone want a goofy-looking, less practical version of a Cooper anyway? A Mini sports car isn't a bad idea in theory, but these just didn't pull it off.
The Aussie news site says that when the new Cooper launches, we can expect a five-door version of it soon after, possibly followed by sedan version, an MPV and more crossovers.
In other words, the Mini product binge might be changing, but don't expect it to go away anytime soon.