Over the past two months the owners of a Range Rover, a Toyota 4Runner and a Volkswagen Touareg, among others, have all traded in their sports utility vehicles for new pint-sized Minis at Mini of Fairfield County, a dealership in Stamford, Connecticut.

Such deals have helped to push sales of BMW’s sporty UK-based brand to new records, even as the overall US car market has sunk to its lowest levels in more than a decade. Mini sales in the first half of the year, totalling 26,400 vehicles, were a third higher than for January-June 2007.