Tire mfrs and profits

I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Maybe some of you smart minds can help me with this.

My latest score of MINI Cooper wheels came with Pirelli 3000e tires. Doing some research, I learned that this tire was made in just one size, 175/65R15.

That size is OE on base MINI and base MINI convertible. Period. Not many other cars call for a tire in this size, and nothing at all that I would consider "modern".

I'm having trouble understanding why a tire manufacturer would go through the trouble to R&D a tire that fits just one model of just one car - and not a big seller at that.

Not even all base MINIs got the Pirellis as OE, either. It seems most of the Cooper wheel sets I've bought have Continentals.

I figure AT MOST, Pirelli might have sold 40,000 of these tires a year. I just don't get where the profit is in such small numbers.

Can anyone help?

I bet most of the tires we all like to autocross on are sold in far fewer numbers than that for most sizes. A lot of OE tires are kind of one-offs that aren't common in the marketplace other than as an OE tire, I would presume that this has something to do with keeping the production of that model reserved for themselves rather than having to compete with open market sales of the same model.

You could ask Suzuki and Metzler why they did the same thing with the TL1000S, which has a far smaller production run than the Mini...