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MINI Cars Save BMW Group Sales in 2008

Here's another German automaker writing its sales page in the black book of history of December 2008. We're pretty sure you know BMW Group sales dropped heavily during the last month of 2008 in the land where the doomed crisis began, but the million dollar question is: by how much? With only 21,626 vehicles sold in December, the descending spiral reached the psychological drop level of 35.9 percent. The numbers are even more alarming since the results are the combined efforts of BMW and MINI.

The whole year situation is not peachy either since the 2008 sales volume didn't exceed 303,190 vehicles, meaning 9.7 percent down when compared to the 335,840 new units sold in 2007.

Even if the explanation for this not so jolly situation is quite well-known by the entire population of the Blue Planet, President of BMW of North America, LLC., Jim O'Donnell, felt probably entitled to state his point if view.

“Low consumer confidence and tight credit was a double whammy in '08 making it a year we'd all like to forget,” he said adding that “one bright spot for us was a December of reasonable sales and gaining share in the premium market for the full year,” O'Donnell explained.

Despite the dropping sales for many of BMW's brand vehicles, MINI cars seem extremely popular among American drivers even during hard times. Thus, MINI USA sold no less than 3,566 automobiles in December which is 0.1 percent up from the 3,562 cars sold in December 2007. Still, it's a growth, isn't it?

But the icing on the cake is that MINI managed to sell 54,077 new units over the whole past year, meaning an increase of 28.6 percent, compared to the 42,045 cars reported in 2007.

"Fuel efficiency and small cars had a big year in 2008 even with low fuel prices slowing down the positive sales development in the past few months," said Jim McDowell, Vice-President of MINI USA.

"A balance of rational and emotional reasons are going to be the way of the future to continue small car growth in the U.S. MINI's success in 2008 may be a good indication of this balance," he added.

MINI success in US last year makes we think about how the little ones could save the world!
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