Head of MINI Design on His First Two Years at the Helm & What Comes Next

[DimON]

Two years into the job, MINI’s head of design says the most important work his team has done is not a concept car. It is getting the cars MINI already sells noticed. Holger Hampf took stock of his tenure at the end of our Lake Tahoe roundtable, and what he said was less about the next big reveal than about making the current range count, and about the reveals he is not ready to talk about.

Two years in the chair

MINI named Hampf its head of design in September 2024, moving him from BMW Group Designworks and replacing Oliver Heilmer, as part of a wider BMW design reshuffle. We covered the move at the time in MINI Gets New Head of Design Amid a Larger BMW Shake-up.

Asked to sum up what the period has produced, he was modest, with a small caveat.

“I hope I’m not patting my own shoulder too much, but we have (recently) fired on all cylinders.”

The list he gave was long: one-offs and collaborations, the Paul Smith edition, the Countryman Untamed Edition and an Oxford Edition. He also pointed to the Icon Drops programme as a way of building anticipation, saying people are starting to wait for what MINI does next.

Activation first, then the next idea

What he treats as the main job is less glamorous than a concept. The current MINI range, he said, is still young, and parts of the world have barely seen it.

“There are still markets where you hardly see any of them.”

That is why getting the existing cars in front of people is his priority.

“That’s the most important, visible to the outside world, visible job we are doing.”

It fits with how he talked about the Untamed Edition and the collaborations: each one is a way of making the existing range louder, in a specific market, for a specific customer. It also fits his view on timing. The full family has been on sale globally for roughly two years, some markets earlier and some later, and he wants to see how it performs.

“Let’s give the current portfolio just a chance to show what they’re able to do sales-wise.”

What surprised him

Asked for the biggest surprise of the job, his answer was not about a car.

“It’s not just a car with a name on it.”

Hampf said he has been struck by how closely brand and product are tied together at MINI. The brand and the product, he said, are discussed together. He added that many other car companies do not manage this, and let a good product and a brand strategy run side by side without meeting.

Down to the millimetre

The second surprise was about precision. Hampf has worked as a designer for a long time, with external clients and with brands within BMW Group. Even so, he said the level of detail in a MINI caught him out from the first day.

He gave two examples. One was a headlight configuration. The other was the Untamed wheel, which went through three design loops. The first rim looked too flat and lacked three-dimensionality, so the team painted the next version differently and tried again.

“It’s a surprise how much down to the millimetre the car is.”

Some people, he said, would call that slow. He does not.

“As long as I’m given the time to explore a topic and make it good, I’ll do that. I’ll take the time.”

What comes next

Asked what he is working on now, and whether MINI might revisit a compact MPV given renewed interest in the segment in Europe, Hampf declined to go there. He said it is not the right time to talk about the future, and that there are many things coming that he cannot discuss.

The line he offered instead was a careful one.

“We obviously think about the future, we work on the future, we just don’t talk about the future.”

He added that the sketch walls in the studio are full and that his team is very busy.

There is one more signal, from earlier in the conversation. Talking about the Deus Ex Machina and Vagabund one-offs.

“We’ve set the bar high. So now the pressure is on.”

Where our own reporting stands

Hampf did not discuss the next-generation Cooper in our conversation, so nothing here should be read as confirmation of anything. What we have reported so far is sourced direction, not confirmed platform. The petrol Cooper is expected to stay on a revised version of the current UKL architecture, while the electric Cooper is expected to move to BMW’s Gen6 platform, shared with the iX3 and upcoming i3 saloon. The next Countryman EV is also said to share that architecture. None of that has been confirmed by MINI.

What Hampf did make clear is the order of work. First, show what the current range can do. Then, in his words, a lot of things are coming that he cannot talk about. But there was thing that stood out to us as he said it. The smile on his face which clearly hinted and good things to come.

The post Head of MINI Design on His First Two Years at the Helm & What Comes Next appeared first on MotoringFile.

View the full article