http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1110479_mclaren-design-boss-frank-stephenson-rumored-to-rejoin-mini
He doesn't like the R56. He thought MINI missed an opportunity to move the car in a new direction. http://www.motoringfile.com/2013/12/07/frank-stephenson-on-mini-design-theyve-lost-it/ They’ve lost it. [When] they chose to change the design, [c. 2007] perhaps that would have been the best moment to break away and really innovate like the original Mini did. With all the new technology today, how would you reinterpret a small car with the technology that BMW’s capable of using for that type of car? You can imagine a very small car like a Mini with the innovative packaging again, putting maximum amount of space around the very limited four occupants, for example, how to carry luggage and all that. So I was hoping for a breakthrough, creative look to the new Mini to the new, new [second-generation] Mini. If he rejoins MINI, I would hope for a small city car like Rocketman, but I think he would be severely constrained with BMW's current approach that every car must be built on a shared platform.
I (like many others) also think they missed a good bet when they started upmarket and upsized everything. But where I think they went wrong was in not keeping the small cars and adding the big ones under a different name, just like they did back when, leveraging the name further and keeping truer to the original. IOW, they could have had Minis, MINIs and say, Maxxi's I understand the fact that they needed bigger cars to compete in the US market - just look how well the original Countryman sold and the newer even bigger Clubman and Countryman are selling - but they took a wrong turn in their marketing, IMHO.