BMW on Tuesday started production of the new five-door Mini hatchback at its Plant Oxford here in England.
The five-door is a new body style introduced with the third generation, 2014 model year redesign and thus a first for the Oxford plant (originally built decades ago for Pressed Steel adjacent to what was then a sprawling Morris site, since levelled for an office park).
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Today’s production start is the latest phase of a GBP750m spend on the BMW Group’s UK production facilities from 2011 to 2015. The other plants are the Swindon pressing factory (also once a Pressed Steel plant) and the Hams Hall engine machining and assembly factory near Birmingham (built on the site of a former electricity generating plant).
BMW launched the redesigned three-door Mini last November and the five-door goes on sale – worldwide eventually – from next autumn.
It’s the second model to be built on a new platform which increases the flexibility of the body manufacturing process, allowing more models of greater variation to be produced more efficiently, an essential element of the Mini line’s build-to-order appeal, BMW said.
Preparations for the third generation Mini line included the building of a new body shop at Oxford and “significant investment” in facilities and technologies at Swindon where the car’s body panels are pressed and a number of sub-assemblies welded up.
Updates at Oxford for the five door included additional tooling for the body sides in the plant’s new body shop, new equipment for the paint shop wax sealing line to accommodate the extra door and differences in the shaping of the rear of the car, new paint colours (including the return of ‘Electric Blue’) in the paint kitchen, new rear door cells for Swindon’s sub-assembly line and new roof and panel tooling in the press shop.
