Sweet little thing. Broadspeed was not a production Mini, sweet all the same. Coupes seem to be MINI to me.
I'm always interested in what you say, Dave.O. Thought you would want to know my wife's response to your monster allegation is that her CM is "pleasingly plump." My response is why care if it keeps Mini financially healthy so that the familiar Mini hardtop can be continued. One other requirement is customer appeal and I think as long as that exists Mini hardtop will exist. Hard to think the attraction will die off. Long live Mini! From a proud Roadster owner.
Like I said before, if I needed something bigger than my Clubbie, I wouldn't get a MINI. Case in point: http://www.motoringalliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17590
I'm not saying I would buy that vehicle as an alternative, I'm reaffirming that there are better options for *me* if I needed something larger than my Clubman.
Sigh. "The Market... how does it work?" What is bought in sufficient quantity to be profitable... will be produced. What is not bought... will not be produced. At least not for long. Look at the year-over-year trends on the YTD MINI numbers... allowing for oddities related to introduction schedules of Coupe and Roadster. Note what is growing, what is relatively stable, and what is declining.
I don't even think you can consider the roadster and coupe numbers, above... I'd need to see the 'average wait' time, but if you only made 600 cars in a year and you sold all of 'em with an average wait of 3 months for production, it could be an nice little niche car. A 'vert has always been a pretty specialty car... much like a 2 seater. Only offering the 2 seater 'vert might be a simplification, but maybe only with a switch to a new model type. Since they already have the tooling to do turn the hardtop to a 'vert for the R56, I'd at least expect to see that continue until the R56 would go away. Oh wait... that's just a year or so! I'm so tall that going topless is a moot point for me... the top bar always blocks my field of view. Only the Ford Mustang drop top gives me any visibility at all and was a fun rental for a long weekend in Napa.
Yeah, that was the point I was trying to make with the "oddities" comment. You can trend something that hadn't settled into a normal supply/demand situation at the beginning of the 2-point dataset. Well, some people do, but they're idiots. ;-)