on 1/8/02 1:31 PM, Aeseeyou@aol.com at Aeseeyou@aol.com wrote:
>> Minis? They have bullied, threatened and badgered a number of my
>> best friends in the UK and Canada for using the name "Mini" on their
>> business. One friend in Sheffield got a letter saying to stop using
>> the name "Mini" even though he had been in business for many years
>> without any problems with BMC, BMH and Rover Group
BMW are real sticklers for the use of their copyrighted brands. There's a
reason for this -- if they are at all lax about people using the name, and a
real issue arises where they need to get someone to stop using the name due
to negative brand impressions (i.e., "Mini" Motors, a midget racecar
manufacturer -- a hypothetical problem), they will have a hard time fighting
it in court. The thinking being that if they were so lax about it before,
the brand couldn't have had all the exclusivity that they will need to prove
to shut down the offending company. This has happened to other companies.
This is pretty harsh, but it's another function of living in a society
filled with lawsuits.
As a BMW M3 racer, I can attest to BMWs sometimes great, sometimes terrible
treatment of fans. A friend's on-line community site, bmwmpower.com, which
hosts about 3k of us wierdos, was forced to pull down reprints of Technical
Service Bulletins, and they were really harsh about it. But then they were
totally cool about the brand issue of her having the URL -- they gave her a
hefty chunk of cash for the domain, and helped her secure bmw-m.net as an
alternative.
> last year (Nov. 3) They were actually getting lapped by some of the real
> Minis Ha, Ha, Ha! I guess that BMW had really gone all out to promote their
Let's be completely fair here -- the vintage Mini that won was a
highly-prepped, very non-stock Mini. It was a giant killer -- like all
well-sorted racecars. Koni's car, the "new" Mini that it was racing, hadn't
been sorted yet and they hadn't gone anywhere near as far as the other team.
> venue, Bulls__t! There is only one real Mini and it ain't from Germany! Well,
> I take that back, there are quite a few real Minis but only fake ones from
> Germany!
Keep in mind that without BMW, the Mini, MG, and Rover brands would probably
be dead right now. When they bought them, no one wanted the companies. BMW
(particularly, Wolfgang Reitzle, who now heads up Jaguar/Aston/Land
Rover/etc.) turned around the company far enough that it was a worthy
organization, but didn't have the deep pockets to finish the job. Hence the
company being split.
Land Rovers had highly spotty mechanicals before BMW, now they're at a level
of quality you'd expect. Rover was a pig no one could save -- sorta like
GM's car business. ;-) MG was producing a car that the British press called
"lackluster" compared to the Miata, a car that was _trying_ to be British.
These were all issues BMW AG was trying to solve. Not an easy task for a
relatively small, independent car manufacturer.
Mini was a dead brand, with nothing innovative on the horizon. The new one
was partly engineered by Brits, and partly by BMW -- to great effect,
according to the global motor press. It is the evolution of a car that no
one had ever tried to produce a modern generation of before. Without BMW
that revival probably never would have happened.
Just my $0.02.
-peterg
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