The BMW-Mini Thread

Mini reveals facelifted John Cooper Works hatchback and convertible

Hottest Mini returns for 2019 with enhanced standard equipment and reduced emissions

Standard equipment offerings for the UK market have been enhanced, with a choice of 17in alloy wheels, black exterior and interior trim, and leather bucket seats now available at no extra cost on both body styles.

Also fitted as standard to the performance model is a sports suspension and braking system, while a John Cooper Works bodykit visually differentiates it from other models in Mini’s line-up. As with all other Mini models, LED front and rear lights, automatic headlights and rain sensors are standard fitment.

The new John Cooper Works hatchback and convertible are available to order from 18 January 2019, with production beginning in March for deliveries later that month.

On the road pricing is unconfirmed, but retail prices start at £24,480 for the hatchback and £28,140 for the convertible. Final cost details are expected later this month.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/...d-john-cooper-works-hatchback-and-convertible

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Mini kicks off birthday celebrations with limited-run Cooper S

Just 500 examples of the Mini 60 Years Edition three-door hatchback are destined for UK dealerships

Mini has unveiled a limited-run variant of the Cooper S three-door hatchback, in celebration of 2019 marking 60 years since the launch of the original BMC Mini.

Visual elements unique to the special-edition Mini include a new British Racing Green paint colour, contrasting black roof and wing mirrors, specially designed bonnet stripes and two-tone 17in lightweight alloy wheels.

A commemorative badge features on the bonnet, indicator housings and as an LED projection from the bottom of the driver’s door. UK examples will receive a set of front-mounted, rally-style spotlights.

The interior continues the anniversary theme, with seats upholstered in model-specific dark leather with contrast stitching and the 60 Years emblem displayed on the steering wheel and front seats.

The Mini 60 Years Edition retains the 2.0-litre petrol engine and seven-speed automatic gearbox from the Cooper S to accelerate from 0-62mph in 6.7sec and on to a top speed of 145mph.

Standard equipment includes an 8.8in touchscreen infotainment system, Apple CarPlay, Bluetooth connectivity and wireless smartphone charging. A rear-view camera and parking sensors are carried over from the Comfort package for the standard Cooper S.

The 500 Mini 60 Years Editions headed for UK dealerships will be available from March 2019, priced at £29,990 – £8850 more than the standard model.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/mini-kicks-birthday-celebrations-limited-run-cooper-s

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Special Mini ’60 Years Edition’ models confirmed for SA

To mark six decades since the launch of the original Mini, the BMW-backed brand has revealed a special new model … and it’s already confirmed for South Africa.

Set to arrive on local shores in June 2019, the Mini 60 Years Edition will be offered in three- and five-door guise, each with two engine variants (the Cooper with its 100 kW 1,5-litre three-cylinder engine and the Cooper S with its 141 kW 2,0-litre four-banger).

While the press images you see here show the model finished in a classic British racing green hue, it will also be offered in Midnight Black metallic, Moonwalk Grey metallic, Melting Silver metallic and “Mini Yours” Lapisluxury Blue non-metallic. Each body colour can be combined a white or black roof, with the side-mirror caps finished in the same hue.

Bonnet stripes (with a “specific anniversary design”) and fresh 17-inch light alloy wheels round off the exterior updates. The “60 Years” logo appears not only on the left-side bonnet stripe but also on the side scuttles of the turn indicators and on the door-sill finishers.

Inside, the logo is repeated on various model-specific interior trim finishers, the front headrests and the steering wheel, as well as in the LED projection function which becomes visible when the driver’s door is opened. The sports seats, meanwhile, are finished in “Mini Yours Leather Lounge 60 Years” in a dark maroon colour.

The special edition vehicles also feature the “60 Years Chili” equipment package as well as items such as LED headlamps, LED foglamps, white turn indicators and LED taillamps in the Union Jack design.

Local pricing has yet to be revealed…

https://www.carmag.co.za/news/special-mini-60-years-edition-models-confirmed-for-sa/

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Mini celebrates 60th with special edition hatch

The original Mini turns 60 this year and the brand is marking the occasion with a special edition based on the latest three-door and five-door hatchback models.

The Mini 60 Years Edition, which is due to reach South Africa in June this year, sports unique exterior and interior design features that celebrate the ‘go-kart’ hatchback’s heritage.

The ‘British Racing Green IV’ paint option, for instance, celebrates its racing history, although buyers can also opt for various black, grey, silver and blue hues.

17-inch alloys, bonnet stripes and various ‘60 Years’ logos also mark out the exterior and there’s even an LED puddle lamp to remind you that the Mini has been around for six decades now.

You will have to pay extra for the Chilli package, however, if you want the Union Jack taillights along with the LED headlights and interior lighting package.

Inside the special edition you’ll find more ‘60 years’ logos, along with sports seats upholstered in a unique Dark Moon leather finish.

The Mini 60 Years Edition will be available with two familiar turbopetrol engine choices - the 100kW 1.5-litre three-cylinder (Cooper) and 141kW 2-litre four-cylinder.

Pricing will be announced closer to launch.

https://www.iol.co.za/motoring/late...ates-60th-with-special-edition-hatch-18836951
 
Mini Cooper SE 2019 review: first drive of electric Mini

A pure-electric Mini will finally go on sale later this year, a decade after the firm’s first public EV trials - and we've driven a prototype

It has taken a decade but at last there’s an electric Mini that we can buy. Or there will be soon.

Our drive of this prototype is a prelude to the launch of the finished article at the end of this year. That car is called the Mini Cooper SE, the S implying equivalence to the 189bhp petrol Cooper S and the E that it’s electric. Its motor puts out 181bhp and 199lb ft of torque, the latter slightly adrift of the S’s 221lb ft, but they’re comparable.

Although there was a 2013 electric Mini concept, the 2009 Mini E project was a more substantial undertaking, being part of a test programme in which more than 500 vehicles were publicly trialled. This full-production electric Mini shares plenty of characteristics with the 2009 Mini E, among them brisk-to-rapid, instantly available acceleration, notable deceleration when you release the throttle and a pleasingly easy drive.

But there are also substantial differences, not the least of them being the restoration of the rear seats and a boot. Both of these spaces had been sacrificed to bulky battery and power electronics in the experimental car. The new version’s battery occupies the tunnel running the length of the cockpit and the area previously taken up by the fuel tank to occupy a T-shaped space, requiring almost no changes to the Mini’s body-in-white.

That there have been any at all is because BMW, Mini’s parent company, did not anticipate that the power density of batteries would improve fast enough to allow a viable pack to be installed in the current Mini hatch. In fact, the battery pack has slightly fewer cells than the BMW i3’s, offering 92kWh rather than 94kWh of stored energy, and its protrusion below the floor has necessitated a slight ride height rise. Despite this, the SE’s centre of gravity is lower than the Cooper S’s, promising sharp handling.

The suspension uses the standard hardware save for some reinforcing of the lower front arms, the spring and damper settings also altered to suit the additional weight and its revised distribution. More subtly, the cosmetic wheel-arch extensions have been widened to compensate for the ride height gain and the reduced choice, compared with the Cooper S, of smaller 16in or 17in wheels.

Much of the rest of the SE’s hardware was available when the i3 was launched in 2013, this production electric Mini sharing the i3’s synchronous electric motor, power electrics and lithium ion battery cells. A more significant difference is that the Mini is front drive, the motor living in its usual home beneath the bonnet, whereas the i3 is rear drive, its motor located below the boot floor.

This Mini weighs more than the i3, of course, because its core structure is steel rather than lightweight carbonfibre, the penalty being an extra 80kg. Compared with the petrol-engined 2.0-litre automatic Cooper S that Mini considers the Cooper SE to be the equivalent of, it weighs an extra 130kg – not bad for an EV. The additional weight shifts the axle loads rearwards, to a more favourable 54:46 front to rear rather than 60:40.

The Cooper SE’s more powerful i3S motor yields a 0-62mph time of “between seven and eight seconds”, says BMW, and similar top speed of around 95mph. The official performance statistics have yet to be confirmed. That includes the Cooper SE’s range, which is reckoned to be equivalent to the less powerful standard i3’s at 160 miles in real-world use. That means this EV is not one of the latest breed, Jaguar I-Pace, Hyundai Kona and Kia e-Niro among them, that can deliver the more usable range achieved by Tesla.

However, the Mini is smaller than any of these, of course, and is more likely to be a short-distance car. As the experiments with the earlier, 90-mile-range Mini E demonstrated, this is less inconvenient in practice than it sounds.

The evolution of that car into this, which spans a complete generation change incidentally, sees this Mini’s usable package uncompromised by the change of motive power. It’s entirely familiar to sit in, too, bar some of the instrument displays, which were not yet ready for viewing, and the deletion of the handbrake.

Moving off is quite different, despite one’s thumbing of the starter toggle of conventionally propelled Minis. You hear a lightly jangling, otherworldly start-up jingle to confirm that your electrified Mini is on, engage ‘D’ and whirr off, to the aural accompaniment of not much at all unless the tyres are riding a coarse road surface.

The go is instant if you want it to be, as with every pure EV, and there’s plenty of it. There’s plenty of slowing down, too, if you select the strongest of the Mini’s recuperation modes, which decelerates the car at a rate of 0.19g. That may not sound so much, but it’s easily enough that you can dispense with the brake pedal in most urban circumstances.

Alternatively, you can flick a dashboard toggle to diminish it to 0.11g, these two values sitting either side of the deceleration rate of an i3. It’s a shame that the toggle sits distantly in a row of switches at the base of the centre console, though. The Kia e-Niro’s paddles are a more convenient way to tune your deceleration rate.

So how does this Mini handle? Most Minis of the past 60 years, including most of the BMW-era cars, have served the kind of happy-golucky handling that allows you to chuck the car into a bend and adjust your route with the accelerator, a particularly bold fling-cum-throttle drop producing a (usually) helpful slide from the rear. And all with very little body roll. That’s exactly what you get with this ampere-powered version.

On a coned test track, the Cooper SE proves to be almost as entertaining a drive as a Mini with a manual transmission, more than one gear and an enthusiastic exhaust note, a succession of laps producing an entertainingly familiar physical experience, if a different aural one.

Before discovering that, though, comes a demonstration of a new method for controlling a surfeit of torque when it’s applied to a shortfall of grip. We drive the electric Mini onto a wetted section of Tarmac and floor the throttle, as instructed. It launches, fast, and without a hint of wheelspin or, more telling, spot braking of either front wheel.

That’s because this traction control system uses the engine management system to staunch the excess torque at source, rather than restoring grip with a momentary clenching of calipers. It’s a less wasteful way of modulating power and it seems to work well, both from standing starts and when cutting through corners.

Less impressive is the springy, almost feel-free steering, which has yet to be calibrated. This apart, and the occasional sensing of its extra heft, this Mini handles like a Mini. It’s likely to cost close to £30,000, less any grant, but will come slightly better equipped than the Cooper S when it goes on sale late this year.

The first UK deliveries from Mini’s Oxford plant are due in March 2020. It makes a fitting development for the Mini’s 60th anniversary, and if hardly a ground-breaker, particularly in range terms, it should usefully widen the appeal of electric cars.

Mini Cooper SE specification

Where Munich, Germany Price £29,000-£30,000 (est) On sale December Engine Electric, synchronous Power 181bhp Torque 199lb ft Gearbox single gear, fixed ratio Kerb weight 1350kg Top speed 95mph (est) 0-62mph 7.5sec (est) Range TBC CO2 0g/km Rivals BMW i3S, Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/mini-cooper-se-2019-review-first-drive-electric-mini

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They are cute, but somehow entirely manage to miss the point of being a mini. Mini = well MINI as in SMALL. I used to have a mini - damn awesome little car! (Except in the wet, that carburettor was entirely in the wrong place!) It went like the crackers, turned on a tickey, and just all round massive fun to drive.

These new models are just too big, too everything, really. Call them anything BUT a Mini!
 
Mini SA kills off 12 manual derivatives (including JCW hatch)

Mini South Africa has removed as many as 12 manual derivatives from its local range (including the manual John Cooper Works hatchback), leaving just four three-pedal variants in its line-up.

The four surviving stick-shift models are found in the hatchback range (in One and Cooper guises, and three- and five-door body styles), meaning the Clubman, Convertible and Countryman line-ups now feature only automatic transmissions (either seven- or eight-speeders, depending on the model). The move, presumably due to a lack of local demand for manual models, effectively cuts each of the aforementioned three ranges in half.

Interestingly, the cull includes the manual three- and five-door Cooper S hatchbacks as well as the manual three-door John Cooper Works range-topping hatch.

The remaining JCW-badged derivatives thus all employ eight-speed automatic transmissions, channelling the turbocharged 2,0-litre four-pot’s 170 kW and 350 N.m to all four wheels in the case of the Clubman and Countryman variants, and 170 kW and 320 N.m to the front axle in the case of the hatchback.

https://www.carmag.co.za/news/indus...ff-12-manual-derivatives-including-jcw-hatch/

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Mini 60 Years Edition for SA: here’s how much it will cost

In January 2019, the Mini 60 Years Edition was revealed to mark (you guessed it) six decades since the launch of the original Mini. And now, ahead of its arrival in South Africa, we have local pricing.

Set to hit the market in May 2019, the Mini 60 Years Edition package will be offered for the 3-Door Hatch and 5-Door Hatch body styles, in both Cooper and Cooper S guises (the Cooper with its 100 kW 1,5-litre three-cylinder engine and the Cooper S with its 141 kW 2,0-litre four-banger).

Specifying it in Cooper form will add R51 000 to the price. In the case of the three-door hatch, that’s a total of R433 000 for the six-speed manual and R454 000 for the seven-speed dual-clutch transmission. The five-door, meanwhile, will cost you R443 000 in manual and R464 000 in auto once you add the 60 Years package.

And the Cooper S? Here, the 60 Years package adds R41 000 to the price, which takes the three-door to R504 000 and the five-door to R514 000 (both are fitted with seven-speed dual-clutch gearboxes as standard, as manual versions are no longer offered).

https://www.carmag.co.za/news/new-models/mini-60-years-edition-for-sa-heres-how-much-it-will-cost/
 
New Mini Cooper S E: electric hot hatch spied undisguised

Performance-focused Cooper S E, Mini's first series electric car, has been spotted ahead of its late 2019 launch

Mini’s first full-production electric car, the Mini Cooper S E, has been spied virtually undisguised during a photo shoot ahead of its launch later this year.

As first revealed by Autocar, the British brand's first battery-electric production model will be a Cooper-badged hot hatch, to reflect its performance heritage. It will be based on the Mini 3dr hatchback, with the 181bhp electric powertrain taken from the BMW i3.

Previously spied in a camouflage livery, the machine has now been captured during what appears to be an official photo shoot event in the US and confirms that the EV will closely follow the standard Mini design.

The biggest difference is the closed-off grille, a revised rear and new wheel designs. The photos also show that the charging port is set to be located in the same place as the fuel filler on the standard Mini. The images also show that Mini’s Union flag lights will remain in place on the EV.

The Mini three-door hatchback's UKL1 platform wasn’t originally designed with an all-electric model in mind, so has been adapted to accommodate the technology.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/new-mini-cooper-s-e-electric-hot-hatch-spied-undisguised

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All-Electric Mini To Be Revealed in July

Mini has joined other brands in offering a compact all-electric car and the all-new Mini Electric will be revealed on the 9th July 2019. Here are some more details as well as a teaser video.

The Charged with Passion campaign kicked off with the below video and teases Mini's all-electric offering. Other than what appears to be generic and typical Mini styling as well as a charging port where the fuel cap used to be.

https://www.cars.co.za/motoring_news/all-electric-mini-to-be-revealed-in-july/46941/

 
Mini Cooper SE

Urban mobility with purely electric drive can now also be experienced in hallmark MINI style. The new MINI Cooper SE makes it possible. It combines sustainable mobility with the riding fun, expressive design and premium quality that are typical of MINI. As such, the first solely electrically powered model of the British brand offers pure MINI feeling with locally emissions-free driving.

The spontaneous power delivery of its 135 kW/184 hp motor, the brand-specific front-wheel drive, and the innovative driving dynamics system with wheel slip limiting close to the actuator, give the new MINI Cooper SE a particularly intense and unmistakable agility, known as the go-kart feeling. Its model-specific lithium-ion battery enables a range of 235 to 270 kilometres. The high-voltage battery is situated deep in the vehicle floor, ensuring there are no limitations in terms of luggage compartment volume as compared to the conventionally powered MINI 3-door.

With the new MINI Cooper SE, the British brand once again sets a pioneering impetus for urban mobility. 60 years ago, the revolutionary design principle of the classic Mini established the basis for maximum interior space within a minimum surface area. The MINI was launched in 2001 - a modern re-interpretation of creative space usage and unique riding fun that became the original in the premium segment of small cars. The new MINI Cooper SE will be the first purely electric premium small car, paving the way to a sustainable yet at the same time highly emotional driving experience in urban traffic.

https://www.netcarshow.com/mini/2020-cooper_se/

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New Mini Electric revealed as affordable Brit-built EV

Mini's first mass-production electric car will start from under £25k and will arrive in UK dealers in early 2020

Mini’s long-awaited first attempt at a mass production electric car has been revealed, mating the brand’s classic three-door hatchback with an electric powertrain offering Cooper S performance in a package claimed to be more affordable than every rival.

It has been dubbed the Mini Cooper S E in markets outside the UK, but the brand has chosen to retain the Mini Electric name in Britain to avoid confusion and clearly differentiate it from the standard range. However, the Cooper S badges will remain (alongside new E badging) to denote the performance level.

The most significant development, however, is the car’s relatively low price point: including the government grant for electric vehicles, it will start from around £24,400 – said to be less than an ‘equivalent spec level’ petrol Cooper S.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/new-mini-electric-revealed-affordable-brit-built-ev

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