Mini cancels the mini Mini, aka the Rocketman

The Mini Rocketman, aka the mini Mini, has been shelved, CAR understands.

BMW has recently signed off a slew of new Minis, many of which are revealed in the new February 2012 issue of CAR Magazine, but the baby Mini was not one of them.

Mini showed the Rocketman concept as design study to show what a shrunken Mini true to the brand's core values could look like in the twenty first century.

It was dubbed internally the MiniMini or Mini City.

What killed the charming yet extremely short-wheelbase 3050mm urban runabut was not marketing or costs but the fact that the radically shrunk new platform threw up all sorts of new problems.

Munich would have had to invest considerable amounts to make a Mini Rocketman-sized city car meet current regulations.

Chief among the problems were the stability, handling and crash performance of a baby Mini.

Mini originally showed the Rocketman concept car at the 2011 Geneva motor show. CAR's sources suggested a shrunken Mini could have been pencilled in for production around 2016.

The Rocketman concept was just 3419mm long (versus 3723mm for a current three-door Mini hatch) and 1907mm wide.

By Georg Kacher