MINI is a brand of BMW.
BMW broke up and sold the Rover Group in 2000 and kept only the MINI brand, which it relaunched as a marque of its own in 2001 after production of the classic Mini had ended.
Where it sits
Two levels. A figure marks a company boundary crossed; a word means the figure was never published.
MINI
67 years, three owners since 1980
The year is coloured by whoever held it at the time.
- 1959 The British Motor Corporation revealed the first Mini on 26 August 1959, as two almost identical models, the Morris Mini-Minor and the Austin Seven, whose shared name became the marque.
- 1988 The Rover Group, state-owned since the nationalisation of British Leyland in 1975, was sold by the British Government to British Aerospace, which took the Mini with the rest of the Austin Rover business. The Government announced a conditional contract to the Commons on 29 March 1988, for 150 million pounds after clearing the group's debt, and told the Commons in 1994 that British Aerospace had bought its shareholding in July 1988. British Aerospace, now BAE Systems, sold the whole group to BMW in 1994.
- 1994 Mini came to BMW in early 1994 as part of the Rover Group, which British Aerospace announced on 31 January 1994 it was selling to BMW for about 800 million pounds.
- 2000 BMW broke up and sold the Rover Group in 2000 and kept only the MINI brand, which it relaunched as a marque of its own in 2001 after production of the classic Mini had ended.
BMW
4 marques
The British marques were bought, not built: MINI came with the Rover Group, and the Rolls-Royce name came from the aero-engine maker in a split that sent the Crewe factory and Bentley to Volkswagen. The largest blocks of ordinary shares are listed under members of the Quandt family rather than under a holding company.