Ok, I might have pulled the trigger a bit too early to tell for MINI, but premium compact compacts don't make a good formula for the long term. Hopefully BMW won't pull a Saturn and make it a one product brand for 7 years.

As for Mitsubishi, it's really a tossup, but I don't see a niche for it. You can see the desparation of Mitsu right now with its 0 down, 0 interest, 0 payment for 90 days finance ploy. Probably the reason why the Eclipse is selling fairly well. But Mitsu's total passenger car sales is almost equal to that of Toyota's Corolla sales and lower than that of the Civic or Accord. For the month of November, Mitsu only sold barely above 18k passenter cars. It's total SUV sales is only 73,828 for the year. Add to the effect of the bad publicity with CR's rollover report and the Lisa Left Eye from TLC's death. Mitsu's brand a bit tarnished right now. You gotta wonder, if the 0/0/0 financing wasn't available, what would Mitsubishi's status quo be right now? :dunno:

For Mercury, I think the brand might have a chance if the Mondeo comes to the US as a rebadge Mercury model. Mercury might be the Euro Ford for the USA. It might keep the middle step brand alive with the Ford name being blackeyed right now and as long as it stays away from fleet sales.