Van Hooydonk on

1. SOCIAL MEDIA CRITICS

“We deal with it in the same way we do with customer clinics. I never go to those clinics because the individual comments can be quite brutal. It’s not always enjoyable. I wait until the final quantitative evaluation, the global resume. We look and analyse for trends; I don’t look at it [social media] on an hourly basis.”

2. RETRO CARS

“We have always looked at our heritage and debated about what we could do without ever really going retro. We’ve done homage cars, like at Villa d’Este where we’ve got positive reactions, but it was never a retro design. It was a reimagination of a classic. We take ideas from it, but we never went full-bore along that path.”

3. MINI’S SUCCESS

“There’s no brand that is so universally loved or understood. In traffic, you can get away with anything when you drive a Mini. Why? Three reasons: it’s about an underdog sympathy; there’s also something humanesque in the car; and it’s a feeling that this isn’t a car that controls me. It will make my life more enjoyable.”