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J.D. Power: Mini, Lexus again offer most satisfying sales experience

JD Power has released its annual Sales Satisfaction Index Study, and once again Mini and Lexus have taken top honors. Overall, buyers are more satisfied with the auto-buying sales experience than they were last year, with those surveyed reporting an average score of 664 points on a 1,000-point scale. That's up from 648 in 2011. Dealer satisfaction also increased by five points over last year as well.
All told, Lexus brought home an index score of 737, which was high enough to put it atop the luxury brands for the second year in a row. JD Power says Infiniti came in second in that category with a score of 728 and Cadillac rounded out the podium with it's rating of 725. Speaking of Infiniti, that brand saw the single largest jump in sales satisfaction of any brand on the survey, popping up 52 index points over 2011.
Among mass-market brands, Mini ranked highest with a score of 712, followed closely by Buick with 706 and GMC farther down the line with 683. You can check out the full press release below for more information.

Mini exiting WRC after just one year

There was a fair bit of hullabaloo two years ago when Mini announced a return to the World Rally Championship for this season, but the road to making that happen has been as rocky as a gravel stage. It spent 2011 developing its JCW Countryman WRC challenger, changing its mind about how it wanted to work with Prodrive, dumped a driver due to budget issues, then registering its entry after the deadline had passed in a ploy that might or might not have been a protest aimed at the WRC promoter.
Mini had stated that it wanted to win the whole championship in 2013, and spent 2011 doing six WRC rounds as development. As it stands for this year, the WRC Team Mini Portugal - paid for by Mini, run by ProDrive - scored 26 points in the first rally at Monte Carlo and has so far blanked the rest of the season. The relationship between Mini and ProDrive appeared to be an ever-contentious affair, at the end of this season, even the money will dry up along with what support there was.
Because it contested every race in the calendar, though, Mini says it has completed the FIA requirements for homologation of the JCW Countryman WRC; meaning that privateers can continue purchasing the car and run it in the WRC. BMW Motorsport is continuing development and parts supply of the 1.6-liter turbo engine, and a report in Autosport indicates that ProDrive will continue to run Minis in the series next year.

Mini Traveller MPV caught on flatbed with five-door Mini and convertible

With the next-gen Mini Cooper hardtop set for its big debut next week at the LA Auto Show, we're getting a good look at what will be coming next for the BMW brand. Mini will follow up the introduction of the Mini Cooper with the new convertible model, but our spy shooters have proof that a plus-sized model (rumored to be called Traveller or Spacebox) is coming along quite well.
There still isn't much information about the Traveller (shown above), which will be longer and wider than the Countryman, but we can tell that it takes dimensional cues from both the Countryman and Clubman to maximize passenger and cargo space. The face of this new model will definitely be closer to the 2015 Cooper, and it will have a split rear door setup like the Clubman. Like the more recent Countryman and Paceman designs, though, the Traveller will have horizontally positioned taillights instead of the Cooper's vertical lights. We have no indication as to when we'll be seeing the Traveller in production form, but this prototype seems to be in the final stages of development.
As for the Cooper, we've already spied the hardtop completely uncovered, and just recently we spotted the sportier Cooper S Convertible being transported on a flatbed. The dual center-outlet exhaust is the key tell that model was the S, which likely means that the droptop spotted here the base model.