FWIW, the answer to that question is yes. We bought a Mini a few years back and the Union Jack indicators were an upgrade (not a cheap one as I recall)
Oh, I had no idea it’s supposed to be a Union Jack, though it makes sense after you said it. All it looked like to me was the designer intentionally doing something unbelievably stupid for no reason at all. I guess having a really dumb reason is slightly better.
I was trying to find out if they blinked in the weird arrow pattern by configuring one online, but it's impossible to tell (they're not shown blinking).
Kinda surprising that they're not keen on selling potential customers on the upgrade.
The salesperson doesn't care, and the dealership sells whatever the manufacturer ships to them. The Mini dealer isn't about to start stocking Kias instead of Minis.
If anyone at Mini sees their 2019 model sold N in the first 6 months, and their 2021 model sold N/2, does anyone at corporate ask the dealerships to explain?
I hope someone would care. What if 90% of potential buyers jumped off when they saw the mileage numbers. Or after the test drive. Or when they heard how long delivery would take.
I'm sure they do, but as a car enthusiast, we're forever frustrated, because the number of people who care is simply miniscule.
I always bought used cars and it's frustrating that, of course, the manufacturers/dealers only care about people buying new.
But now, having bought a new car, I realize they STILL don't care about my opinion, because people who care about the car-like-appliances they buy are in such a minority.
Car dealerships have scads of people lining up to throw money at them for the privilege of having a new car. Look at how various non-enthusiast vehicles become trendy and command huge markups -- eg, the Kia Telluride became the "it" child taxi a few years ago (replacing the Honda CRV) and every self-respecting parent simply HAD to pay thousands over sticker to have the latest status symbol.
Go try to buy a new car and the sales people simply don't seem to care about you wanting a difficult to find color combination from another dealer. They could source one if they wanted to, but they don't. They're catering to the masses who are simply to be allowed to buy a car sitting on the lot. They want to make as much money as possible from each sale; getting a marginal sale to someone who actually cares which option package or color they get simply isn't worth it. There are too few of "us" and too many of "them".
In the US, it's incredibly rare to people actually order a car from the factory the way they want it, because nobody is willing to wait. The buyer accepts that they 'have to' buy whatever is on the lot that day. With most cars, you have very few options you can even select from anyway; they're all bundled in packages of stuff you may or may not care about. To be fair, this is an industry-wide trend; having fewer SKUs, in retail parlance, makes a ton of sense. But I think it's particularly bad in the US.
> Go try to buy a new car and the sales people simply don't seem to care about you wanting a difficult to find color combination from another dealer.
This, and similar complaints about the buying process, always feels so weird to me as a European. Parting with such a huge amount as the cost of a new car, AFAIK pretty much nobody in Europe ever picks a pre-made one from the lot; it's always ordered to spec, with the exact colours and equipment and options you want. What's the huge rush for you Yanks that you don't do it that way? "But that takes weeks!" -- yeah, so what? If you're getting a new car, don't you usually know that a few weeks beforehand?
Why are people in such a rush to get their cars? I understand if your old one broke down and you absolutely need one for a job ASAP, but if you can afford to buy a new car, surely you could afford to wait a bit to get exactly the car you want?
I ordered a car in 2016, and the process is terrible. For one thing, the local dealers didn't seem interested at all, so I had to drive 30 miles away to a dealer that was willing to make an easy sale.
Then, the options really aren't there anyway, depending on the brand. If I want the safety features, I'm also getting 'premium wheels' which I don't want, the gps navigation time capsule because h I'm not paying $100 to update that, and 70 speakers. And it didn't actually come like we ordered anyway (it was pretty close though, had the vacuum cleaner when we wanted a spare tire, managed to find a spot to squeeze in a spare tire). And after all that, it still took 90 minutes to pick up the car when it showed up 3ish months later.
It's much easier to take a car that's already on the lot. Manufacturer's websites are pretty good at finding inventory that's close to what you really want, and you just deal with that.
People at a showroom might not be considered actual customers. We would need to get actual customer who have purchased the car to contact Mini, publically via Twitter, so they could no longer hide behind this statement.
