Mini

Mini is busy revamping its entire lineup for the 2023 model year, and now we’re getting a good look at the next-gen Countryman. As best we can tell from these fresh shots, we’re looking at the Countryman S, however, the camo is still pretty heavy, so do what you will with what we’re about to tell you.

Mini expanded the special edition Shadow to the Hatch, Convertible, and Electric models. The new model will only be offered on the UK market and will come with prices ranging from £22,340 for the 3-door hatchback model to £35,050 for the Electric model with an automatic transmission.

Floating Motors is a collaboration between Pierpaolo Lazzarini and Jet Capsule, a company that specializes in manufacturing watercraft. They have now come together and aim to transform some iconic classic car forms into boats.

Among the various special editions and artistic interpretations that have distinguished the MINI brand’s history, the most recent one in chronological order is the MINI Strip by designer Paul Smith. The car was unveiled in London a few days ago. It is a one-of-a-kind example based on the notion of sustainable design. The goal was to simplify the car as much as possible without giving the impression that it had been stripped down.

The MINI brand began collaborating with John Cooper 60 years ago in September 1961, and that bond continues to this day; MINI’s top performance variant still bears the JCW name - with a John Cooper Works badge - and this new special edition has been launched to commemorate that very relationship between the two brands that spans six decades.

MINI Coopers are known for providing a driving sensation similar to that of a go-kart. How exactly can you make a MINI better? Well, how about swap the engine out for a V-8 coupled with rear-wheel drive? Yeah, that’ll do it.

““The”” Mini Vision Urbanaut is not really a new concept as the design of the vehicle was first showcased back in November last year. The Vision Urbanaut concept has now been ultimately realized from those 3D mockups and can be experienced at BMWs Design studio in Munich, come July the 1st.

The crew that filmed 2003’s The Italian Job had to overcome a couple of obstacles and one of them was that they weren’t allowed to drive combustion-engine cars inside Los Angeles’ subway tunnels. So, they switched to electricity.

After entering the world of electrification with the Mini Cooper SE a couple of years back, the automaker is now gearing up for its next adventure. The next-gen Mini Cooper EV was recently spied in Sweden during a winter test session. The upcoming Mini Copper EV is still at least a couple of years away, but it will play an important part in shaping the company’s future. The car was spied with heavy camouflage that barely gives anything away, but here’s what we’ve documented about it.

As car enthusiasts, we are sometimes suckers for a good deal. Luckily, in most cases, common sense prevails, especially when a deal looks too good to be true. That said, sometimes, common sense does not prevail and what initially seemed like a great purchase ends up being an endless money pit.

Hoovie’s Garage is one of those YouTube channels where you, sometimes, see stuff like that. And although most of the cars redeem themselves this one in particular might prove to be too much of a hooptie, even for Hoovie.

Engine swaps, we’ve see quite a few. Burly V-8s replacing puny flat-fours or screaming V-10 engines giving new life to Japanese sports cars and muscle cars alike. A motorcycle engine powering a Mini, however, is not something you see every day.

As part of the BMW Group, the Mini brand is also slowly moving toward electrification. The British brand is now offering a hybrid version of the Countryman and an all-electric variant of the Cooper (called Mini Electric), but it wants to expand further. Next on the list, according to Mini, is a John Cooper Works model, and the company is already working on concept cars that will preview a high-performance EV.

Try to predict what mobility will look like in the next 15 or 20 years judging by the current prototypes from a couple of companies and if your imagination allows it, you’ll be looking at a very diverse environment.

I mean, Uber wants to take ride sharing to the skies, flying car startups are slowly making headway, and pretty much every carmaker out there has some sort of self-driving prototype in mind. And most often than not, these contraptions are designed like mobile living rooms or work spaces on wheels. Another thing in common is their promise to cut down on dead time since they ditch the human driver in the first place.

Mini owners aren’t exactly off-road nuts, not even when their cars come fitted with Mini’s ALL4 all-wheel-drive. That, however, might change with a little input from Dakar Rally specialist X-raid.

The team behind Mini’s resounding victories at Dakar is now using its rally and motorsport expertise to beef up your Countryman. You know, in case grocery-getting becomes boring.

Manhart Racing is back with a new aftermarket program. This time, the German tuner has set it sights on the Mini John Cooper Works GP, the 301-horsepower performance-spec version of the Mini JCW. It’s an intriguing choice on the part of Manhart Racing. On its own, the JCW GP already fits the profile of an edgy hot hatch with enough power and performance characteristics to make some of its rivals look tame by comparison.

The Mini was conceived by Alec Issigonis to be the ultimate city car, small in proportions but featuring a groundbreaking platform that made it surprisingly spacious on the inside. It sold in over five million copies and is considered one of the most influential designs ever. So good was BMC’s biggest hit that it even made waves in the racing world, both on the rally stages and on the circuits of the world. It is, then, not that surprising that a latter-day Mini with enough mods is capable of putting 500 horsepower to the ground.