MINI Prepping Mini-er MINI
When BMW announced that it would be building a million front-wheel-drive cars, a conflict between the new BMW-branded “Megacity” or 0-Series and BMW’s existing MINI brand seemed inevitable. And though we’ve posed the conflict in terms of an either-or decision, it’s clear that BMW sees no problem with offering small, front-drive models through both its BMW and MINI brands. In fact, BMW will offer its Megacity alongside the MINI Cooper, and, according to Autocar, a new MINI-branded model based on the same platform but slotting underneath the Cooper. MINI promises that the new city car will be no larger than the original Mini, and that it is likely to offer a two- or three-seat interior. This three-cylinder, Smart ForTwo-fighting Mini will be built to pass North American crash test standards, so don’t be surprised if it arrives stateside eventually. And though it returns the MINI brand to its roots, the question of how this sub-MINI will relate to its Megacity cousin remains an open question.
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Cute as a bug, but it needs a good tranny (unlike the smart's 'stupid' gearbox) to wring decent performance and driveability out of that three-pot.
Kind of sad when MINI has to make a mini.
BTW, why do people refer to the current Mini as "Cooper"? Isn't Cooper a package on the "One" model? Or did BMW drop the original nomenclature and just resort to Cooper for all of them?
"Yes, there’s the Mini Cooper and Cooper S". Only in North America, elsewhere their are lower price non cooper models. BMW USA is trying to keep the car up-market. My sister has a Mini D One Clubman (Diesel Wagon). Not sold here. There is also a really basic "Mini First" for about $15000 manual trans only.