The latest news is that BMW Mini has decided that is will stop development of the properly small Mini Rocketman. This car was previewed as a concept car at the 2011 Geneva Motor Show and I was genuinely excited that there was going to be a proper Mini instead of those ultra large Minis that we have right now. How unfortunate that this will now not be a reality.

It seems that the Mini Rocketman concept will not be further developed as the car's really short wheelbase and overall length (304mm shorter than a regular BMW Mini) has created handling, stability and crash protection issues. If Mini were to modify the basic design it would have to spend more money. This isn't the case with BMW who are actually owned by spoilsports.

The reason I say this is that this BMW who owns the Mini brand these days is a profit driven enterprise and the proof of this is the statement made by Albert Biermann, BMW M’s development chief who told Autocar last year that BMW and M were struggling to find a business case for a supercar in the likes of the Mercedes Benz AMG SLS. “We have the skills and we’d love to do it,” he said. “We’ve discussed it several times but we’ve never been able to make the business case. Everything we do has to make money.”

And so since BMW Mini would need to spend more money to enable the Mini Rocketman project to be feasible they decided not to do so. Much like the BMW enthusiast's dream of a BMW M1 replacement, the Mini enthusiast of a properly small Mini has been dashed. I suppose BMW's 'Joy in Driving' ads are just ads. They should actually read 'The heck with Joy, its the profit margin that's important'.

- Something BMW (owners of MINI) would not make due to maintaining profit margins

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