This guide covers the three-door MINI Cooper hatch across the R50, R53, R56, F56 and F66, with the Cooper, Cooper S and John Cooper Works (JCW) compared side by side. Think of it as the map rather than the territory. Each generation has its own full MotoringFile buyer’s guide, linked as we go, and what follows is the short version so you can decide which one earns the long read.

Important notes: We’re sticking to the petrol Coopers in this guide so that means we’re not covering convertibles, EVs, the three JCW GP models or the R56 era Coupe and roadster models. We will tackle those aspects of the MINI range soon.

Which MINI Cooper should you buy? The short answer

There is no single best MINI Cooper, but there are clear best answers for specific buyers. These are ours, drawn from the individual guides we have published on each generation.

Notice what is missing from that table: the cheapest example of anything. Condition matters more than mileage on an R53, a cheap pre-LCI R56 Cooper S is rarely a bargain, and the F56 taxes neglectful buyers. The pattern holds across every generation below.

MINI Cooper trims explained: Cooper, Cooper S and JCW

The badges have stayed constant for a quarter century. What they mean has not. In the first generation the S was the headline act and the Cooper was the sensible one. By the F66, all three trims run a version of BMW’s B48 2.0-litre in North America, and the differences come down to calibration, torque and which options MINI will let you tick.

A note on names. MINI says the C in Cooper C stands for Core, and the C and S badges apply to all petrol MINIs while E and SE mark the electric ones, as we first reported in our first look at the F66. The older codes are chassis designations: R50 for the first-generation Cooper, R53 for the supercharged S, R56 for the second generation, F56 for the third and F66 for the fourth. Our breakdown of what every MINI Cooper code reveals goes deeper.

MINI Cooper specs by generation and trim

Here is the full comparison. Weights are US-spec curb weights from our launch coverage, including the 2014 weight comparison, and the JCW weights come from our F66 JCW spec breakdown. Power figures for the R50, R53 and R56 shift slightly by market and year, so treat them as a guide and check the car in front of you.

MINI quotes 7.4 seconds to 60 mph for the F66 Cooper C and 6.3 for the Cooper S. Prices have moved too. The F66 Cooper launched at $28,950 against the final F56’s $25,800, the Cooper S at $32,200 against $30,900, and the JCW at $38,200. By mid 2026 we were quoting $29,900 for the C and $33,900 for the S before destination, so check our look at the 2027 lineup before you shop.

R50 and R53 (2001 to 2006): the supercharged icon

The first BMW-era MINI is the one that put the brand back on the map. The R50 Cooper was the sensible hatch, powered by the Tritec, a Chrysler-engineered iron-block four built in Brazil. The R53 Cooper S added an Eaton M45 supercharger, a six-speed Getrag manual and a whine that people either love or tolerate. Our R50 launch retrospective shows how fresh it all felt.

Drive a well-sorted R53 today and it feels almost shockingly alive: immediate throttle, short gearing and a chassis that rotates with a playfulness modern cars have traded away for weight and screens. On paper, that is nostalgia. In practice it holds up, with one condition. These cars were never engineered for twenty-plus years of life, so condition matters more than mileage, and later years matter more than early ones.

Inspect the supercharger first. Eaton no longer makes replacements and MINI has no plan to bring them back, so listen for bearing noise beyond the usual whine, look for oil seepage around the nose cone and ask about service and rebuild history. After that, the predictable problems: oil leaks from the crank seal and crank sensor O-ring, a coolant expansion tank that can split without warning (overheating can be fatal for an R53), and a power steering pump that was a weak point on early cars. Water is the sneaky one. Clogged sunroof drains can send water into the passenger footwell, where the body control module lives, and a shorted module turns the car into a very expensive paperweight.

Gearbox choice matters as much as trim. The ZF CVT on early R50s sits at the bottom of our ranking of every MINI transmission and should be avoided outright. The early Midlands five-speed was fragile and vague, and the Getrag five-speed that arrived in 2004 is a huge improvement, which is why 2005 and 2006 R50 Coopers are so much more desirable. The R53’s Getrag GS6-85BG six-speed ranks third on that list, with short throws that charm on a back road and wear on you in traffic.

Aim for 2005 to 2006. 2004 is a solid middle ground, while 2002 and 2003 can be great but carry more risk, particularly in the R50.

The JCW is the transformative option. Early versions were dealer-installed kits with a modified head, upgraded intercooler, revised supercharger and an ECU remap for roughly 200 hp, and MINI later offered the kit from the factory. Factory provenance is easier to verify, but a tired JCW supercharger turns a collectible into a project. Our Cooper S vs JCW breakdown works through the premium generation by generation, and our ranking of every JCW GP covers the halo versions.

Who it is for: someone who wants the most elemental MINI Cooper and will do the homework. Who it is not for: anyone who wants a car they never think about. The full inspection list lives in our Ultimate R50 and R53 buyer’s guide, and our R53 hub and R50 hub collect the rest.

R56 (2007 to 2013): where MINI learned the hard way

The R56 is the generation people warn you about, and the warning deserves more precision than it usually gets. It swapped the supercharged Tritec for the Prince family, co-developed with PSA: an aluminium block, plenty of new technology and a twin-scroll turbo on the Cooper S and JCW. Impressive on paper. In practice the engines are the whole story, and the story changes with the engine code.

The Cooper is the safe one. The naturally aspirated N12 in pre-LCI cars is simple and generally durable (listen for timing chain noise on a cold start and check the valve cover for leaks), and the N16 that arrived with the 2011 LCI is the safest bet in the entire R56 range. The Cooper S is where it gets expensive. The pre-LCI N14 is the source of most horror stories: timing chain stretch, high-pressure fuel pump failures, carbon build-up from direct injection, turbo oil supply problems and cooling failures. The N18 that came with the LCI revised the timing system, crankcase ventilation and fuelling, and it tolerates real-world ownership far better.

Then the JCW, where the fine print matters. The factory JCW hatch used a JCW-specific N14 with stronger internals, Brembo four-piston front brakes, a larger turbo and a chassis tune the Cooper S kit could not replicate. It did not get the N18 when the LCI arrived. From 2011 through early 2012, facelift JCWs still ran the N14, and the N18 version only appeared for the 2013 model year. A 2011 JCW wearing facelift bodywork can therefore carry first-generation risks. Verify the engine code, not the model year.

Beyond the engine, the Getrag manuals are durable and the Aisin automatic is hit or miss, so a manual remains the safer choice. Suspension wear points (control arm bushings, dampers and wheel bearings) show up faster than on most small cars, and interior plastics peel and turn sticky. The better news is that rust is not the widespread structural problem it is on the R50 and R53.

The call: an N16 Cooper for reliability, an N18 Cooper S for the best balance of speed and durability, and a JCW only if you have the diligence. A cheap pre-LCI Cooper S is rarely a bargain. Everything above is expanded in our Ultimate R56 buyer’s guide, and the R56 hub has the history.

F56 (2014 to 2024): the Cooper that fixed it

The F56 was supposed to be replaced around 2021. BMW’s decision to delay the fourth generation stretched it to a decade, and MINI facelifted the same car twice, which makes the F56 three cars in one skin. It was also the first Cooper built on BMW’s own UKL platform with BMW’s own B38 and B48 engines, a direct answer to the Chrysler-era hardware and borrowed French engines of the generations before. By 2017, MINI had gone a full year without a recall, which would have been unthinkable in the R56 era. Our UKL explainer covers how that decision was made.

The three phases matter more than the model year. Pre-LCI1 cars (March 2014 to late 2018) are the cheapest and least refined. Early 2014 and 2015 Cooper S models were hit by a crankshaft bearing recall, and the quality of the rebuilds varied, so we would avoid them unless the paperwork is transparent. From 2016 the picture is substantially cleaner. The LCI1 (2019 model year) replaced the six-speed automatic with a seven-speed DCT, which hesitated early on until software updates arrived, so confirm they were done. US-spec Cooper S and JCW builds from before the OPF particulate filter arrived keep a louder exhaust, and build date, not model year, is what counts. The LCI2 (2022 model year) brought the styling MINI had held back and the final run of manuals.

On the engines, the B38 three-cylinder in the Cooper is reliable and efficient but not the choice for enthusiasts. The B48 in the Cooper S is the generation’s strongest argument, durable across hundreds of thousands of owner miles with normal maintenance. The hotter JCW tune can consume oil under hard use, and its upper engine mount typically fails around 60,000 miles at a cost of $800 to $1,200. Control arm bushings get noisy with age, and the plastic thermostat and oil filter housings can leak.

The six-speed manual in the Cooper S and JCW, the Getrag GS6-59BG, is rated for roughly 435 lb-ft in a car that makes 236, which explains its durability and its popularity with tuners. By 2023, more than half of US F56 JCW hardtops carried it, and our deep dive on that gearbox explains why. The interior deserves a mention too: for material quality, it remains MINI’s high-water mark.

For the F56, MINI debuted a five door variant for the first time. MINI lengthened the chassis slightly to fit a second pair of doors, and the result is a small but functional back seat. It is still a MINI, so the space is a squeeze, but adults get a little more comfort in the rear than the three-door ever allowed. The extra length also improves the ride. The cost is character: the added mass and length take the edge off the sharp turn-in and go-kart feel that define the three-door, so if driving feel is the reason you are shopping, the three-door is still the purer car.

What to buy: a 2016 to 2018 Cooper with a manual and a documented history for the lowest risk, or a 2021-on Cooper S or JCW with the manual for the best driver’s car of the generation. What to avoid: a 2014 or early 2015 Cooper S without full crankshaft recall documentation, any DCT car without updated software and any JCW with a long service gap and no sign of regular oil changes. The full breakdown is in our Ultimate F56 buyer’s guide, and the F56 hub collects everything else. Our F56 vs F66 JCW back-to-back shows what changed next.

F66 (2024 to present): more power, one gearbox

The F66 is a heavily revised F56, not a clean-sheet car, which explains why it feels eerily familiar and why the Cooper still sits on the structure that debuted in 2014. MINI pushed the headlights forward, stripped out non-functional vents and scoops, and moved to a minimal interior dominated by a round OLED display. It also made two decisions that matter to buyers: the manual is gone, and every F66 uses the seven-speed DCT, with a dash-mounted toggle replacing the gear lever.

The Cooper C is the surprise. In North America it uses the same B48 as the S, tuned to 161 hp and 184 lb-ft, and it lands close to the performance of an R53 Cooper S. Our Cooper C review explains why that feels right. The problem is what MINI withheld: no paddles, and no access to the JCW Style package. The Cooper S, with 201 hp and 221 lb-ft, unlocks that package for about $1,200, adding paddles, adaptive dampers, larger brakes and the aero kit. For most buyers that combination is the sweet spot of the range, as we argued in our review of the Cooper S with JCW trim.

The full JCW answers a different question. It makes 231 hp, the same as the final F56 JCW, but 280 lb-ft arrives at just 1,500 rpm, 45 lb-ft more than before and 59 more than the S. It also brings three downgrades: no manual, single-piston calipers in place of the old four-piston units, and 146 lbs of extra weight. At the Nürburgring 24 Hours the F66 JCW lapped in 10:06.773 against 10:44.118 for the outgoing F56 JCW, so the trade clearly works on a stopwatch. Whether it works for you depends on how often you actually use the torque, which is the question our Cooper S vs JCW breakdown asks.

On value, the Oxford Edition remains the play. For the 2027 model year, MINI USA lists the Cooper C Oxford Edition at $25,500 for the two-door and $26,500 for the four-door, plus $1,350 destination, as covered in our Oxford Edition report.

Like the F56 generation, MINI also offered a stretched version of the F66 in the form of the F56 five door. The body is stretched slightly, the rear doors are small but useful, and the back seat is a little more comfortable than in the three-door. The ride benefits from the extra length, and the turn-in is a touch less sharp because of the added mass. MINI USA sells it as the four-door, and it is the version priced in the Oxford Edition figures below.

One caveat deserves honesty. The F66 has no long-term track record yet, so we cannot give you a documented list of common faults the way we can for the R56 or F56. It uses a revised version of the B48 that proved durable in the F56, which is encouraging, but encouraging is not the same as proven. The interior is also a trade: the F66 moved to textile materials as part of a deliberate design shift, coherent on its own terms but not as plush as the best F56 cabins. Our F66 hub has the rest.

Cooper vs Cooper S vs JCW: the verdict by generation

The gap between the trims has never been consistent. In some eras the JCW was everything, in others almost nothing. Here is how it plays out for each MINI Cooper generation.

MINI Cooper pre-purchase checklist, by generation

Whatever you are shopping for, these are the checks we would make before anything else. While this is in way exhaustive, it’s a great starting point. As always, we would recommend taking any potential purchase to an independent MINI mechanical for inspection.

Our take: pick the generation first, then the trim

Most buyers start with the badge and the budget. Start with the generation instead. A Cooper S can be the best car in this guide or the most expensive one, and which it turns out to be depends on the engine code, the build date and the paperwork long before it depends on the badge on the boot.

Begin with what the car is for. If it is a daily driver you want to stop thinking about, buy an F56 Cooper from 2016 on, with the manual if you can drive one, and spend part of the savings on an independent inspection. If it is a weekend car and you want the most connected driving experience, the R53 Cooper S and the F56 Cooper S or JCW with the six-speed manual are the two answers, and they could hardly be more different. The R53 is raw, loud and demanding. The F56 is quick, durable and easy to live with. If you want a new car with a warranty, buy the F66 Cooper S, add the JCW Style package and stop there, unless you will genuinely use the extra torque of the JCW. Our Cooper S vs JCW breakdown will help you decide.

Next, set the budget with ownership in mind, not just the purchase price. On the R53 and the pre-LCI R56, the cheap example is almost always the expensive one, because deferred maintenance shows up as a supercharger rebuild or a timing chain job in your first year. Hold back a repair reserve before you buy, and be prepared to walk away from a car that needs one on day one.

Then choose the gearbox, because it shapes the car as much as the trim does. In every generation up to the F56 the manual is the safer and more rewarding choice, and on the F56 JCW it is the difference between a premium that makes sense and one that does not. Our ranking of every MINI transmission shows which ones to avoid. On the F66 there is no choice to make.

Only then pick the trim. The Cooper is the right answer more often than enthusiasts admit, particularly the N16 R56 and the F56 B38. The Cooper S is the sweet spot of almost every generation, as long as the engine is the right one. The JCW is for the buyer who will use what it adds and can afford to maintain it. The case for the cheaper Cooper is stronger than the badge hierarchy suggests.

Finally, verify before you pay. Ask for the engine code, the build date and the full service records, then use the checklist above. If a seller cannot or will not produce them, that tells you what you need to know about the car.

Four generations in, the MINI Cooper story has a clear arc. MINI built its first cars on borrowed hardware, learned expensive lessons on the second, then spent a decade making the third properly. The fourth is the quickest and, without a clutch pedal, the least involving.

What happens next is still undecided. BMW is consolidating its architectures, and our reporting puts the next all-new Cooper in the early 2030s with an F66 LCI in between, as we laid out in the Cooper’s future and in the story of how BMW almost killed the combustion Cooper. Until then, the F56 is the last Cooper built before the manual disappeared and the F66 is the first built without one. That gap is what you are really choosing between.

MINI Cooper FAQ

What is the most reliable MINI Cooper?

The F56 from 2016 onward, with BMW’s own B38 and B48 engines, is the strongest all-round answer. Within the older generations, the R56 Cooper with the N16 engine is the safest of its range, and 2005 to 2006 R50 and R53 cars are the best of the first generation.

Which MINI Cooper years should I avoid?

Avoid early R56 cars, meaning the pre-LCI Cooper S built before the 2011 facelift with the N14 engine, unless the timing chain, high-pressure fuel pump and turbo have documented attention. The same goes for any 2011 or 2012 JCW, which still has the N14, so check the engine code rather than the model year. Also avoid a 2014 or early 2015 Cooper S without full crankshaft recall documentation, an early R50 with the CVT or the original Midlands manual, and any R53 with an unknown supercharger history. The early R56 Cooper with the N12 is a different story and is generally fine.

What is the difference between the MINI Cooper, Cooper S and JCW?

The Cooper is the base car, the Cooper S adds more power and, in most generations, a sportier chassis, and the JCW is the top performance trim. What each gap means changes by generation: huge on the R53, modest on the R56, tied to the manual on the F56, and mostly about torque on the F66.

Is the MINI Cooper S worth it over the Cooper?

On the F66 the S costs about $4,000 more for 40 hp, and it is the only way to reach the JCW Style package. On older cars the answer depends on the engine, because a neglected N14 Cooper S costs far more than the Cooper it replaced.

Can you still buy a manual MINI Cooper?

Not new, as of this writing. The F66 uses a seven-speed DCT across the range, and the F56, which ended production in February 2024, was the last Cooper offered with a manual. We track where that conversation stands in our look at the future of the MINI Cooper manual.

Does the MINI Cooper use BMW engines?

Only from the F56 (2013) on. The R50 and R53 used the Chrysler-engineered Tritec, built in Brazil, and the R56 used the Prince family co-developed with PSA. The F56 and F66 use BMW’s B38 and B48.

Is there an electric MINI Cooper?

Yes. Currently MINI offers the J01 Cooper E and SE. They are completely separate cars from the petrol hatch covered here and not available in markets like North America. See our J01 hub.

Where can I find more MINI buying advice?

Our MINI buying guides section collects every guide we have published, and our JCW section covers the performance trims in depth.

The post MINI Cooper Buyer’s Guide: R50, R53, R56, F56 and F66 Compared appeared first on MotoringFile.

The new functions join the existing Motorway Assistant to cover motorway, country road and city driving on one navigation route. It remains SAE Level 2: the driver is responsible, and the car keeps checking that they are paying attention. BMW says the real-world testing needed for type approval is complete, with official confirmation expected in early 2027.

The rule change matters more than the feature

The legal basis is the updated UNECE R171 (DCAS Series 2), which for the first time permits system-initiated manoeuvres in urban settings. We reported earlier that BMW was first in Germany to win DCAS approval and called it a glimpse of what was coming for MINI. Series 2 is the next step on that road, and the door it opens isn’t BMW-exclusive.

The hardware picture is less tidy. BMW fits the sensors and compute as standard in the new iX3 and iX4 and in every X5, 3 Series and 7 Series variant, then delivers the functions over the air. That works when you design the car for it. It also tells you how much of this depends on what is bolted in at the factory.

Where MINI stands today

MINI’s current ceiling is Driving Assistant Pro, which brought partially automated Level 2 driving on highways to the Cooper and Countryman, and has since been extended to the entire Cooper range. It is a capable system for a very particular job. MINIs, though, are urban cars by temperament. A compact hatchback or a small crossover is exactly where city assistance earns its keep, far more than in a 7 Series.

How this likely reaches the rest of the range (analysis, not confirmation)

Nothing below is confirmed by MINI or BMW. It is our read, built on what we have reported.

The U25 Countryman is the interesting near-term case. The petrol car rides on FAAR, shared with the X1 and 2 Series, so its driver assistance ceiling is tied to what BMW does with those models. BMW’s list of cars with the new hardware doesn’t include them yet. If the X1 gets it, the Countryman has a credible path. If not, it likely doesn’t.

The Cooper and Aceman face a different question. Both current generations are due a mid-cycle update: MINI is planning an LCI of both Cooper models for the 2028 model year, which is the natural moment for new software and any sensor changes. Whether the F66, F65 and J01 hardware can run navigation-guided urban functions is the open question. For the Aceman, it is still unclear whether it moves to the Neue Klasse at all.

The full integration arrives with the Neue Klasse. MINI has confirmed the next Countryman moves to it, and our reporting points to a 2032 launch, giving BMW years of real-world data first. The new platform brings a fresh electrical and digital backbone that unlocks advanced driver assistance and next-generation interfaces. The Neue Klasse is reserved for the Countryman EV. The next Cooper, due in the early 2030s, still has no confirmed platform, so its assistance ceiling is anyone’s guess.

There is also a presentation problem. BMW’s urban system leans on Panoramic Vision and a 3D navigation view on the central display. MINI has nothing equivalent yet. We have suggested it would look at elements of Panoramic Display. Getting that translated to MINI’s round OLED and head-up display will matter as much as the capability underneath.

What we don’t know

BMW names Germany only, with other countries to follow and no roll-out date. Nothing in the release addresses North America, where the rules for hands-free and system-initiated driving differ. MINI has said nothing about its own plans.

The takeaway

Owners shouldn’t expect a software update next spring that teaches their MINI to handle roundabouts. The realistic sequence is BMW first, then a 2028 refresh that may or may not carry the hardware, then the Neue Klasse generation where it is built in.

BMW pitches this as cooperative. Its Symbiotic Drive lets the driver steer, brake and accelerate alongside the system, “true to the spirit of ‘Sheer Driving Pleasure’” in the words of development chief Joachim Post. That philosophy suits MINI far better than a car that takes over entirely. The question is whether MINI gets the capability while it still matters to the current lineup, or only once those cars are history.

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Those two numbers are worth reading together. A year-to-date gain of 6.8 percent alongside a quarterly dip of 2.4 percent means the first half of the year was stronger than the headline suggests, and momentum eased over the summer. MINI still made up about 13 percent of the group’s 551,075 deliveries in the quarter, which fell 6.3 percent overall.

The wider group picture is why this matters. BMW Group’s profit before tax fell 10.6 percent to €2.08 billion in the quarter, and the car business margin, which is how much BMW keeps from each euro of car sales after paying its bills, was 3.4 percent against 5.2 percent a year ago. BMW attributes about 1.25 points of that to import tariffs. Cash flow in the car business turned negative in the quarter, at minus €566 million. China was the weak point, with group sales down about 25 percent in line with the market.

BMW has also cut its 2026 profit forecast. It now expects the car business margin to land between minus 0.5 and plus 0.5 percent, down from 1 to 3 percent, because of one-off charges in the fourth quarter. Those come from retiring older models and battery technology earlier than planned as the Neue Klasse ramps up, and from cutting management roles faster. Without them, BMW says the margin would still be above 2.0 percent, and its cash flow forecast is unchanged at more than €2.5 billion. In June, BMW had already cut the same range from 4 to 6 percent to 1 to 3 percent, pointing to China and the Middle East conflict.

What this means for MINI is less clear. The release does not break out MINI profit, name the brand in the guidance change, or say anything about the Cooper and Countryman ranges. The Neue Klasse is a BMW brand programme, and the direct sales model BMW plans for Europe next year is described for the BMW brand only. The one item that could reach MINI is the chairman’s pledge to review and reduce variants across the portfolio. That is group-wide wording, and BMW did not say it applies to MINI, so treat it as something to watch rather than news. It would be consistent with a company trying to cut complexity and cost.

The takeaway is that MINI is doing its job inside a group under margin pressure. A brand growing while the rest of the group shrinks is useful, and it makes MINI harder to ignore when BMW decides where to spend. Watch the fourth quarter and the full-year numbers in March. If the summer slowdown continues, the year-to-date lead will shrink quickly.

Related: MINI USA Sales Q3 2026: The Convertible Closes In On The Hardtop 2 Door

The post MINI Is the Only BMW Group Car Brand Still Growing in 2026 appeared first on MotoringFile.

A name two camps fought over

The fight happened inside BMW. One group wanted the Rolls-Royce connection front and centre. Executives at Rolls-Royce wanted it downplayed, and were understandably wary of seeing their name on a small hatchback. Goodwood, the home of Rolls-Royce manufacturing, was the compromise: evocative to those who knew and discreet to those who didn’t.

The idea has a long paper trail in our Rolls-Royce MINI archive. By June 2009 we were hearing the project was not really planned. That December, a leaked photo revealed the Goodwood name. When the car was finally unveiled in April 2011, we admitted we had no idea who would say “Inspired by Goodwood” out loud. Everyone kept calling it the Rolls-Royce MINI, which is exactly the shorthand the name was built to avoid.

Real parts, not a trim pack

Special editions usually mean a colour, a badge and a price increase. This one was different. Rolls-Royce interior designer Alan Sheppard oversaw the cabin from the company’s base in Goodwood, and the materials came from the Rolls-Royce world rather than imitating it.

The Walnut Burr veneer on the dash and door pulls was selected at the Goodwood factory exclusively for this car. Add the Cornsilk colour, the cashmere roof lining, the lambswool carpets and dials set in the same typeface as their Rolls-Royce counterparts. The part we can now add is how deep the sourcing went. MINI sourced real Rolls-Royce materials for the build. The final paint, Diamond Black Metallic, was a Rolls-Royce paint. Some of the leather-covered trim was done by Rolls-Royce suppliers.

That separates it from the usual badge engineering. The obvious comparison is Aston Martin’s Cygnet, which was a luxury treatment applied to another maker’s small car. The Goodwood ran the other way, with one brand’s supply chain feeding the other’s product, and MINI assembled it at Oxford. A collaboration this deep between two brands in one corporate family is rarer than it sounds.

Driving the MINI Goodwood

We’ve driven and reviewed this car, and the mechanical story is short. The Goodwood is a bone stock Cooper S, the 181 horsepower turbocharged four-cylinder, without the sport suspension option. That positions it as a slightly more comfortable Cooper S, which suits the cabin. It is not a different car underneath, and nobody should expect Rolls-Royce engineering from it.

On paper, the pairing works. In practice, it is a luxury MINI rather than a small Rolls-Royce, and the name was honest about that from the start. MINI’s appeal is feeling connected to a small, quick car, while Rolls-Royce’s is isolation from the road. The Goodwood sits closer to the first and borrows the second’s materials. That might be fine, if not for the sticker. Buyers in the US were asked for $52,000, and much of what they were paying for was felt rather than seen.

Price, dealers and the lots

The US car went on sale at $52,000 after a debut at Pebble Beach, with the UK launch in June. In North America, the original plan was for every car to be an automatic. Only two slipped in with manual transmissions, which makes them the ones to find now.

The Goodwood sold fairly well, but plenty sat on lots for a long time. By the end of 2012 we were reporting the car priced to sell at $39,995, and large discounts finally moved the remaining stock. MINI of Chicago became the largest Goodwood dealer in the world.

The bigger idea did not survive either. We reported in 2011 that Goodwood would become MINI’s luxury brand, and that never happened.

What the Goodwood still says about MINI

MINI has moved upmarket since, in a way. Prices are higher, the cars are more technical, and the brand is comfortable using the word premium. What has gone missing is the small car luxury the Goodwood represented: bespoke, material led and a little reserved. Today’s version of upmarket tends to arrive as fun, funky expressions, a graphic, a colour or a lit surface. It is design that announces personality rather than craft.

The Goodwood went the other way. It leaned into MINI’s British heritage subtly and thoughtfully, and let materials and process be the story: walnut selected at a factory, paint and leather from the people who supply Rolls-Royce, dials in a typeface most owners would never consciously notice. It was not a perfect car, and the discounting says the market was not fully convinced. Still, it reads now as a brand confident enough not to shout. Looking back, this car was an experiment in British restraint, and restraint is the part MINI has not tried again.

The post MINI Cooper Goodwood: The Inside Story of How Rolls-Royce Helped Build the Most Luxurious MINI Ever appeared first on MotoringFile.

That matches what we have been hearing for some time. The difference is that someone at MINI has now said it on the record.

What Brockhoff said

Drive put the awkward layout to him directly. CarPlay and Android Auto are built for rectangles, so they sit as a small window in the middle of the 9.4 inch OLED and leave the rest of the circle empty. That often shrinks Apple Maps, Google Maps or Waze.

Brockhoff did not dodge it. He acknowledged that CarPlay has to be kept contained to a rectangle on the round screen, then argued that the native navigation uses the whole display and that customers who experience the system in person find it works quite well. On the future, he said there may be more MINI can play with as technology moves on, that keeping the character alive matters from a design point of view, and that integrations should keep getting better.

He named no features and no timeline. That is worth stating plainly, because it keeps this as direction rather than a roadmap. It is still a clear statement of intent from MINI.

It matches what we have been hearing

The consistent message we have received is that MINI sees the round display as a platform to develop, not a design it is trying to move past. The operating system and the display are both expected to keep being updated and refined, with the circle as the fixed point. Until now that was sourced direction, not something MINI would say in public.

Brockhoff’s comments close that gap. The public line (keep the circle, keep improving what runs on it) is the same one we have been hearing privately. We still have no confirmed timeline or feature list, and nothing says a specific fix is on the way. What we have is agreement between what MINI says in public and what we hear behind the scenes.

It also fits how MINI built the system. Every new MINI runs the same software stack, built on a surprisingly capable Android-based foundation, and the display was developed with Samsung Display as the first fully usable round touch screen in the industry. One shared stack means one place to improve, and every improvement reaches the whole range. It also means every flaw does.

CarPlay is the visible limitation, not the whole problem

The small CarPlay window is the complaint that gets the headlines, and it is only partly MINI’s to fix. CarPlay does not support freeform displays in a way that would remove the hard edges of the rectangle, or at least soften the visual transition between projected content and the rest of the screen. Digital Trends made the same point when the car launched: the compromise is not something to blame on MINI, but it is something MINI has to contend with if it wants a round screen.

The deeper issues sit on MINI’s side of the line, and we laid them out in our August critique, MINI OS9 in 2026: Two Years In, Still Not Finished. CarPlay dropping out mid drive, Bluetooth that will not hold a pairing and audio that stops working without explanation were the problems at launch, and they were still there two years later. Add a system that remains sluggish, and an interface so consistently structured that common tasks take too many steps. None of that is a round display problem. A rectangular screen running the same software would hit the same walls.

That changes how Brockhoff’s answer should be read. The shape of the glass is a design decision MINI has made and defended. Whether the system behind it is reliable and quick enough to justify that decision is a separate question, and it is the one owners actually live with.

This is not a new position

Holger Hampf, MINI’s head of design, told Motor1 that MINI has “enough touch interface,” and that the plan is to refine the digital layer and pair it with physical controls rather than change the shape. We covered that stance when he talked screens, buttons and the brand’s future, and spoke with him again about his first two years at the helm and what comes next.

The design side has been equally consistent. In a BMWBlog interview, Designworks described keeping third-party apps feeling like a MINI as a core challenge, noting that “nobody makes a round phone.” MINI knew about the integration problem from the start and built the car anyway.

Design in Munich, the interface team at Designworks and now sales in Australia all say the same thing. The circle is the point.

What evolving has to mean

This part is analysis, not announced plans. OS9 was pitched to us as software that would be updated early and often, with bugs fixed and features added as it went. We covered the functionality boosts and the over the air updates as they landed, and each looked like evidence of progress. By 2026 the core complaints from day one had not moved.

So when Brockhoff says the technology will keep evolving, the test is not whether MINI can tweak the layout around the CarPlay window. MINI controls the background behind it, how the interface frames it and how the car hands off between native and projected apps, and better handling there could soften the transition even with the rectangle intact. A true fix depends on Apple. The test that matters more is whether the evolution reaches the basics: stable connections, dependable audio, a faster interface and fewer steps to common tasks. Because every new MINI shares one stack, an update that fixes those things fixes them for the entire lineup.

We asked in August for a real and transparent plan, the kind a software company would publish. Brockhoff’s comments do not provide one. They do confirm that MINI intends to keep investing in the platform, which is the necessary first step.

MINI has been here before

The history Brockhoff invokes is real. MINI has had a centrally mounted instrument since 1959. The first BMW-era MINI in the early 2000s paired a speedometer behind the wheel with a tachometer in the centre. The 2014 to 2023 generation kept the circle but filled it with a conventional rectangular screen. In 2023, the OLED and Operating System 9 moved nearly all of the car’s functions into the centre display, with a head-up display covering the rest.

That last step is what raised the stakes. When the circle was a surround and the gauges sat behind the wheel, software was a feature. Now nearly everything runs through it. It fits the pattern we saw when the start switch was reinterpreted as a nod to the original key: MINI treats its history as a design brief and keeps iterating on the answer.

The tension MINI has to manage

There is a tension here between identity and utility. The round screen is the most recognisable thing in a modern MINI cabin, and MINI has now committed to it in public, with an executive on the record. That commitment is a fair one. It is also a promise that the software behind the glass has to earn.

MINI’s mechanical reliability has improved enormously in recent years. The software has not shown the same pattern, and a brand cannot keep a circle at the centre of its cabins while the system inside it feels unfinished. The round display stays, MINI has said so on the record, and what we are hearing says it plans to keep making it better. Now it has to show that.

The post MINI’s Round Display Will Stay but Updates Coming appeared first on MotoringFile.

For anyone who follows MINI Cooper production, this is less glamorous than a new engine and arguably more consequential. It changes how the cars get from one stage to the next, which is where a lot of factory time quietly disappears.

What BMW says AFW actually does

According to BMW Group, AFW moves new vehicles without a driver in defined production and logistics zones. The clever part is that the intelligence lives in the building, not the car. LiDAR sensors along the route track people, other vehicles, driverless transport vehicles and temporary obstacles, while cloud software and motion planning direct the car in real time.

Because the sensors are offboard, the cars don’t need any particular equipment specification to take part. That matters in a plant like Oxford, where one line has long handled a wide mix of variants. Our own visit to the plant in late 2023 found a factory already thick with automation, and AFW is the next layer on top of it, as we described in our inside look at how MINI Coopers are made at Oxford.

The system is CE-certified for production use and was developed with Swiss company Embotech. BMW i Ventures took a financial stake in Embotech in December 2024, following a multi-year relationship through the BMW Startup Garage.

The Oxford detail that matters

The headline number is network-wide, but the Oxford specifics are the more interesting part. BMW reports more than 53,000 automated vehicle movements at the plant in the past year. Across the whole network the average is around 3,500 movements a day, so on a rough daily basis (our arithmetic, not BMW’s) Oxford is still a small contributor, at something like 145 a day.

What sets Oxford apart is the integration. It is the first BMW Group site where automated vehicle movements connect directly with existing control systems. The car is positioned precisely next to a lifting device, where a defined work step takes place, with the handshake between vehicle and equipment handled through a cloud-based solution. BMW doesn’t say which operation that is, so we won’t guess.

Context: a plant with a long memory

Oxford has been the home of the modern MINI since production began in 2001, and the plant celebrated its three millionth car back in 2016. More recently it started building the F66 MINI Cooper, which is the car most readers will picture when they search for a MINI Cooper. BMW frames the setting nicely: cloud software and LiDAR in a place with more than a century of industrial history behind it.

On paper and in practice

On paper, this is a clean efficiency story. Fewer manual moves means less waiting, fewer chances for a scuffed bumper and a more predictable flow. BMW also positions AFW as part of its iFACTORY strategy, with Spartanburg the next site to adopt it, in 2027.

In practice, there are things BMW isn’t telling us. It offers no figures on time saved, cost reduced or damage avoided, only the phrase “significant efficiency gains.” It also doesn’t say how many of the 3,500 daily movements happen at each plant, or what share of Oxford’s internal car movements AFW covers. Even the milestone wording is slightly muddled: in places BMW describes the million as reached at Oxford, while elsewhere it makes clear this is a network total. We read it as the latter.

None of this is a criticism of the technology. A million movements without drivers is a real operational track record, and the pilot only began in Dingolfing in 2022. But a milestone is a count of activity, not proof of payoff, and BMW hasn’t yet published the numbers that would settle that.

What it means for MINI fans

Nothing about this will change how a Cooper drives, looks or costs. What it signals is that Oxford is being treated as a showcase site inside the BMW Group network, and that it is getting the same industrial tech as the biggest German plants. For a factory that has spent the last few years in debates about which models it would build, that is a reassuring sign of investment, even if it’s the kind you’ll never see from a driver’s seat.

The more interesting question is what comes next. Once cars can navigate themselves between stations on a site-wide sensor grid, the line between “moving cars” and “running the plant” gets thinner. BMW hasn’t said where it goes from here beyond Spartanburg, and we’ll be watching for the efficiency numbers when they come.

The post MINI Production Gets Driverless: Oxford Joins BMW’s Automated Driving Production appeared first on MotoringFile.

Automotive News published a report today on how the US is becoming an outlier in the global EV race, and it reads like a diagnosis of MINI’s predicament. Combined EV and plug-in hybrid sales reached 53 percent in China in 2025, versus about 10 percent in the US, per the International Energy Agency figures the report cites. Europe sits in the middle: EVs took 23.2 percent of the market through September, up from 17.7 percent a year earlier, according to ACEA. MINI sells in all three places and is trying to run one electric strategy across them. The seams are showing.

Europe is where electric MINIs are at home

The Automotive News piece notes that higher fuel prices have long pushed Europeans toward smaller cars, and that Europeans rarely cover huge distances in one sitting. That describes the J01 Cooper and the Aceman almost perfectly. Since the start of the year, MINI has delivered 220,247 vehicles, up 6.8 percent, and 37.2 percent of those were fully electric, according to BMW Group’s third-quarter 2026 delivery release. That works out to roughly 82,000 electric MINIs through September (our math, since BMW doesn’t publish the absolute figure). BMW doesn’t split MINI’s electric share by region, but the group as a whole is telling: in Europe, one in three BMW Group vehicles delivered in the third quarter was fully electric (34.7 percent). Our read is that Europe, rather than North America, is carrying MINI’s number.

Our own seat time with the J01 has been limited, which is its own commentary on the North American situation, since the J01 has never been sold here. When a European contributor drove the electric J01 JCW back to back with the petrol F66 JCW, the verdict was that it’s less a replacement than a parallel interpretation: quick early, honest about its weight, and rated for about 250 miles on the WLTP cycle but more realistically good for 180 to 200. That’s a fine car for the European usage the Automotive News data describes. It’s a harder sell anywhere that distances stretch.

The problem is where these cars come from.

The electric Cooper 3-Door and Aceman are produced in Zhangjiagang, China, while the electric Countryman is built in Leipzig. A 20 percent tariff on the Chinese-built cars will hit either the price buyers pay or the profit MINI makes, as we noted in our look at the future of electric MINIs. We’ve been tracking whether electric Cooper production could move to Europe, and that logic gets stronger every quarter.

North America gets only one of three electric MINI models

North America is where the strategy really breaks, and the US sets the terms. The federal EV tax credits ended after September 30, 2025, and the Automotive News report describes automakers struggling to commit long term while policy keeps swinging. North America is expected to account for just 5 percent of global battery-electric production in 2026. Canada is a much smaller market whose imports tend to follow US volume, so US policy swings often land there too.

MINI’s answer has been to send North America no J01 electric Coopers at all. The J01 has never been sold here, and the Aceman hasn’t either. BMW paused its plans for electric MINI production at Oxford, and the announcement removed the most obvious route to a North American electric Cooper. The Countryman SE is the only electric MINI currently on sale here, starting at $46,375 in the US, roughly $10,000 more than the petrol version. That context matters when you read MINI’s headline electric share. A 37.2 percent global figure includes a North American lineup where the Countryman SE is the only electric option, so North America’s share of electric MINI sales almost certainly sits well below the average, though BMW doesn’t publish it. The brand’s electric success is a European story, and North America is mostly watching it from outside.

Here’s the twist: the one electric MINI we do get is the best one for most people, and especially for North American buyers. We’ve called the Countryman SE the best Countryman for most people, and our review goes further, calling it the best MINI ever made for daily use. It doesn’t win on range, speed or charging numbers. It wins on predictability: no sudden drops, no surprises on long highway stretches, and a cabin that’s roomy and surprisingly practical. Next to the petrol Countryman S, the SE is calmer, quieter and more composed at speed. After plenty of miles in the SE, the trade is clear: it carries 886 pounds more than the petrol JCW and never feels quite as light on its feet, but that weight buys silence, long-legged comfort and about 245 miles of real-world range. That suits North American driving, where distances stretch, better than the 180 to 200 real-world miles our contributor saw in the J01 JCW.

It isn’t perfect. But as an argument for electric MINI ownership, it’s the strongest one the company has.

It also happens to be built in Leipzig. That means it sidesteps the China tariff in Europe, and it’s the one MINI EV that doesn’t carry the exposure we flagged earlier. The same Automotive News report notes that a Commerce Department rule banning Chinese connected-vehicle hardware and software starts taking effect with the 2027 model year. The J01 and Aceman are built in China on a platform developed with Great Wall Motor. Whether that rule would touch them is analysis on our part, not reporting, and BMW hasn’t said so. But it’s one more reason a US launch of the Chinese-built pair looks unlikely, and with Canada’s imports tied to the US market, a North American one too.

The F56 Cooper SE becomes an accidental cult car

There’s a side effect of MINI’s North American absence that the Automotive News data doesn’t capture. With no J01 on offer, the previous-generation F56 Cooper SE is becoming sought after in some North American circles, something it never was when new. The first production electric MINI, built at Oxford on the same line as the petrol cars, was criticized at launch for its modest range. That same modesty now reads differently to buyers who want a small, light electric MINI hatch and have nowhere else to find one.

Its appeal is partly negative. The only new electric MINI a North American dealer will sell you is a $46,375 crossover in the US, and the small electric hatch that should be the brand’s electric heart is something North American buyers can read about but not buy. Enthusiasts who want an electric Cooper have one realistic option, and it’s a used one.

That’s an unusual position for a brand to be in. MINI’s most desirable electric Cooper in North America is a discontinued one, and its replacement is a car it won’t sell us. If you’re looking for evidence that North America has been underserved, you don’t need an IEA chart.

The strategy that’s emerging is pragmatic

MINI isn’t charging at an all-electric future anymore. We told the story of how BMW almost killed the combustion Cooper, and the lesson is that the dual strategy MINI landed on is why it’s in a stronger spot than most rivals. Petrol and electric Coopers are expected to coexist well into the 2030s, with the J01 running through mid-2031 and an LCI of both planned for the 2028 model year. Our look at what’s next for the Cooper covers the details, including the cancelled J03 electric Convertible, which showed MINI will walk away from EV derivatives that don’t pay.

The longer-term play is BMW’s Neue Klasse architecture. We’ve reported that the next electric Cooper could go rear-wheel drive and that software will shape the driving experience of future Coopers. On paper, that’s the right answer: a BMW-engineered platform, built where MINI can control costs, define production on their own terms and avoid tariffs. In practice, it’s years away. The Neue Klasse Countryman is currently pegged for around 2032. Until then, the MINI EV line-up will continue to look very different depending on where you live.

The post MINI EV Sales Are Booming, Just Not in America appeared first on MotoringFile.

Two years in the chair

MINI named Hampf its head of design in September 2024, moving him from BMW Group Designworks and replacing Oliver Heilmer, as part of a wider BMW design reshuffle. We covered the move at the time in MINI Gets New Head of Design Amid a Larger BMW Shake-up.

Asked to sum up what the period has produced, he was modest, with a small caveat.

“I hope I’m not patting my own shoulder too much, but we have (recently) fired on all cylinders.”

The list he gave was long: one-offs and collaborations, the Paul Smith edition, the Countryman Untamed Edition and an Oxford Edition. He also pointed to the Icon Drops programme as a way of building anticipation, saying people are starting to wait for what MINI does next.

Activation first, then the next idea

What he treats as the main job is less glamorous than a concept. The current MINI range, he said, is still young, and parts of the world have barely seen it.

“There are still markets where you hardly see any of them.”

That is why getting the existing cars in front of people is his priority.

“That’s the most important, visible to the outside world, visible job we are doing.”

It fits with how he talked about the Untamed Edition and the collaborations: each one is a way of making the existing range louder, in a specific market, for a specific customer. It also fits his view on timing. The full family has been on sale globally for roughly two years, some markets earlier and some later, and he wants to see how it performs.

“Let’s give the current portfolio just a chance to show what they’re able to do sales-wise.”

What surprised him

Asked for the biggest surprise of the job, his answer was not about a car.

“It’s not just a car with a name on it.”

Hampf said he has been struck by how closely brand and product are tied together at MINI. The brand and the product, he said, are discussed together. He added that many other car companies do not manage this, and let a good product and a brand strategy run side by side without meeting.

Down to the millimetre

The second surprise was about precision. Hampf has worked as a designer for a long time, with external clients and with brands within BMW Group. Even so, he said the level of detail in a MINI caught him out from the first day.

He gave two examples. One was a headlight configuration. The other was the Untamed wheel, which went through three design loops. The first rim looked too flat and lacked three-dimensionality, so the team painted the next version differently and tried again.

“It’s a surprise how much down to the millimetre the car is.”

Some people, he said, would call that slow. He does not.

“As long as I’m given the time to explore a topic and make it good, I’ll do that. I’ll take the time.”

What comes next

Asked what he is working on now, and whether MINI might revisit a compact MPV given renewed interest in the segment in Europe, Hampf declined to go there. He said it is not the right time to talk about the future, and that there are many things coming that he cannot discuss.

The line he offered instead was a careful one.

“We obviously think about the future, we work on the future, we just don’t talk about the future.”

He added that the sketch walls in the studio are full and that his team is very busy.

There is one more signal, from earlier in the conversation. Talking about the Deus Ex Machina and Vagabund one-offs.

“We’ve set the bar high. So now the pressure is on.”

Where our own reporting stands

Hampf did not discuss the next-generation Cooper in our conversation, so nothing here should be read as confirmation of anything. What we have reported so far is sourced direction, not confirmed platform. The petrol Cooper is expected to stay on a revised version of the current UKL architecture, while the electric Cooper is expected to move to BMW’s Gen6 platform, shared with the iX3 and upcoming i3 saloon. The next Countryman EV is also said to share that architecture. None of that has been confirmed by MINI.

What Hampf did make clear is the order of work. First, show what the current range can do. Then, in his words, a lot of things are coming that he cannot talk about. But there was thing that stood out to us as he said it. The smile on his face which clearly hinted and good things to come.

The post Head of MINI Design on His First Two Years at the Helm & What Comes Next appeared first on MotoringFile.

A manual that isn’t, reviewed as one that is

Ferrari calls the system Manuale By-Wire, engineered in Maranello by a team led by Valentin Marguet. The lever and pedal have no mechanical link to the gearbox. Sensors read both, and software tells the DCT’s clutch packs what to do, giving you six forward gears plus reverse. The car starts in automatic, and dipping the clutch below 70 km/h and selecting a gear hands control to you. As we noted in our original report on the Manuale, it is homologated as an automatic, a detail that matters later.

The question in July was whether it would feel like the real thing. The reviews are now in, and they are better than a “fake manual” has any right to expect. Top Gear went furthest, headlining its first drive “an all-time great manual”. It noted that the car lets you make mistakes, including slipping the clutch, stalling and kangaroo-hopping away. There is no rev-matching, though a sixth-to-first shift gets a small rev surge to protect the rear wheels.

CAR gave it five stars and argued the shift action is more enjoyable than many genuine manuals. Autocar said the brain accepts it as the real McCoy within minutes. Auto Express found itself using the V12 in ways the paddle-shift car never invites, and GTSpirit reported almost no learning curve for anyone who can drive a conventional manual.

The complaints are worth reading closely. CAR flagged the price, the roughly 43 mph limit for engaging manual mode and the lack of automatic rev-matching. Autocar noted you can’t powershift. Every one of those is about what the system declines to do, not about how it feels, which is a very different problem from the one most simulated gearboxes have.

We have been making this argument since 2015

None of this surprises us. We argued back then that nothing adds more to a MINI than a manual, even when the automatic was faster. Our 2018 notes on the JCW Countryman said the manual gave back so much engagement that it was hands down more enjoyable than a very good eight-speed. A year later we went further and claimed that even the worst manual MINI sold beat the best automatic.

Ferrari’s reviewers are now saying the same thing in different words. The third pedal changes what the driver is doing. You plan shifts before corners and choose the gear instead of requesting it. A paddle-shift car is fast, but a manual one is involving, and those are different virtues.

The MINI Cooper manual was never an engineering problem

The last mechanical manual MINI left Oxford in February 2024, and we reported at the time that the decision was regulatory, not about demand. More than 40 percent of F56 JCW hardtops sold in the US were manuals, and MINI USA was still lobbying internally to bring one back in late 2024.

Our ranking of every MINI transmission since 2001 put the Getrag GS6-59BG first. It is rated for roughly 435 lb-ft and only has to handle 236 in the F56 JCW, which is why we called it the best MINI manual ever. The Getrag family from the R56 generation took second and the R53 Cooper S box third. That hardware died because of testing methodology, not because it failed.

Here is where Ferrari’s approach gets interesting. A by-wire manual that is legally an automatic sidesteps the exact obstacle that killed the real one. And MINI already has a dual-clutch to build on, the 7DCT300 family that our ranking named the pick of the automatics. This is analysis, not a leak, but the pieces exist.

Porsche is filing patents, BMW is quiet

Porsche is the clearest follower. A European patent filing describes a dual-clutch with a clutch pedal and shifter, plus a mode that makes the lever behave like an H-pattern. It reportedly works with combustion and hybrid drivetrains, which matters because the 911 T-Hybrid’s electric motor is integrated into its DCT and rules out a conventional manual. A patent is not a product, but it is a sign of intent.

BMW is murkier. We reported in July that the M2 manual is reportedly on the chopping block despite a North American take rate above 50 percent. Our colleagues at BimmerFile put the central question well: Ferrari solved the physics, but whether the economics work at BMW Group scale is unresolved, and nobody has said anything on the record. The logic still holds, though. Clutch-by-wire actuators, load-simulating springs and the control software are things a supplier could industrialise and sell to more than one client.

The catch is price, and feel

Ferrari’s premium over the standard car is roughly 50 percent, and a Cooper JCW cannot absorb anything like that. There is also a purist objection we should take seriously. Our own ranking rewarded mechanical positivity, the slight notchiness of the R53 box and the weight of the R56 gearbox. A by-wire system can only imitate those qualities, and on paper that works. In practice it depends on how convincing the pedal and lever feel, and Ferrari had a half-million-pound budget to get that right.

Our take

Ferrari has shown that a simulated manual can win over sceptical reviewers. It has not shown that the idea scales down to cars people actually buy. For MINI, the more relevant point is that the regulatory wall now has a possible way around it. Whether anyone at BMW Group is willing to build the door remains an open question. But one thing it clear, suppliers like Getrag and others are quietly working on solutions that could one day end up in more affordable enthusiast cars. It’ll be up to MINI and BMW if that extends to the Cooper.

The post The Future of the MINI Cooper Manual: What Ferrari’s 12Cilindri Manuale Just Proved appeared first on MotoringFile.

Day 1: Nevada into Utah

The Rebelle opened with the longest first day in its history, a 377 kilometer loop from Base Camp 1 near Pioche into western Utah and back, only the second time the course has entered a third state. MINI’s Team #206 ended it third in X-Cross on 149 points, behind two Subarus.

It was not a day for the faint-hearted rookie. Killman and Ferrer Lozano were handling a brand-new car, a new navigation format and a partner they had met in person only weeks earlier, at Rebelle U in Ridgecrest. By their own account, the best moment of that training was high-centring on the tallest dune in sight.

Days 2 and 3: the marathon

The first marathon took teams 360 kilometres north from Caliente to Eureka, the farthest north the rally has ever gone. Day 3 began as an all-day visual roadbook, then the weather arrived and teams headed to base camp early with five checkpoints scored.

Day 4: storms and water crossings

Day 4 was presented by MINI, which made the weather feel like a test with the brand’s name on it. Teams left Base Camp 1 on the second marathon, running Rainbow Canyon, passing Valley of Fire and Lake Mead before entering the Mojave towards Route 66 and the camp at Roy’s. Storms and water crossings reshuffled the 4×4 top five. The MINI regained third in X-Cross on 463 points. Our mid-rally report covered that stage as it happened.

Days 5 and 6: Johnson Valley

Johnson Valley brought rocky trails, sand washes and dry lake beds. Day 6 opened with a curveball start that sent every team out at once for a full day of rough, rocky terrain. For a car whose pitch is capability, this was the stretch that mattered most.

Days 7 and 8: dunes and a whiteout

Day 7 took teams around the Salton Sea and into the Imperial Sand Dunes. Before it, Killman said she believed the Countryman’s low centre of gravity would help in the sand, adding, “she was made for it.”

Day 8 stayed in Glamis, in wind gusting to 50 mph. Blowing sand turned the morning into a whiteout, with visibility cut so sharply that some teams let early checkpoints go. The four X-Cross teams ran the dunes as a pod, taking turns to lead and sharing headings. The MINI finished the rally on 1,149 points, third in the class behind the Subaru of Carey Lando and Andrea Shaffer and the Subaru of Kendra Miller and Tasha Krug.

Three awards, one team

Three awards, one team

The MINI crew left Glamis with three honours: third place in X-Cross, Rookies of the Year in the class, and the Challenge Accepted Award presented by Stryten Energy, which is voted on by fellow competitors and event staff. That last one may say the most. It rewards attitude and how a team treats the people around it, and the field chose to give it to the crew in the grey Countryman.

MINI USA’s Sean Green, vice president of MINI of the Americas, credited the crew’s determination and the car’s capability. Ferrer Lozano said the team’s mission was to show what MINI can do, and that other competitors told her watching the Countryman clear obstacles inspired them to attempt their own. Killman described the same effect from the driver’s seat.

What the Rebelle says about the MINI Countryman Untamed

Start with what it does show. The Untamed Edition is a production crossover that can spend eight days on rock, sand washes, water crossings and dunes, in storms and 50 mph gusts, and still finish in a competitive class. Killman bet before the final stage that the Countryman’s low centre of gravity would suit the sand, and the car completed the dunes with its crew intact. That is a meaningful result for a model whose lift is modest, 15 mm for up to 19 mm of extra ground clearance, and whose real upgrades are the all-terrain tyres, recalibrated stability and steering, ALL4 and underbody protection.

The wheel and tyre swap is the most revealing detail. The rally car dropped to a smaller 18-inch accessory wheel with a more aggressive tyre because rough terrain demands a taller sidewall. That suggests the showroom 19-inch wheel is a compromise aimed at the road as much as the trail. Read that as analysis, not a flaw: it is exactly how an owner who wants to go further would configure the car. It also means the Untamed arrives as a capable platform with room to grow, not a finished rock crawler.

What the result cannot show is how the car compares with purpose-built rivals, because the Rebelle rewards navigation, not pace. The winning Subaru was modified, the MINI crew were rookies, and third of four is a place on the podium, not proof of superiority.

The honest conclusion is a measured one. The MINI Countryman Untamed is a credible adventure crossover, not a gimmick, and the rally was a fair test of that claim. Production is due to start in November, and the next test belongs to buyers: whether the lift, the tyres and the electronics earn their premium on ordinary dirt roads. Our launch report has the specification, and the 12th Rebelle runs October 6 to 16, 2027, if MINI wants a second attempt with a seasoned crew.

The post MINI Countryman Untamed at the Rebelle Rally: The Journey in Photos appeared first on MotoringFile.

Driving the two back to back in sequence is useful in its own right. A late validation car sits one step before pre-production, so the gaps between the two are informative: the prototype had a different set of wheels and tires that gave the car less of a crisp turn-in as compared to the pre-production with the final package. Where the two agree, the character of the car is likely settled.

The recipe is simple. A raised suspension, 19-inch wheels with all-terrain tires, and recalibrated braking, stability control and steering give the Countryman a more capable stance and, on paper, a more capable setup. It’s the brand’s most serious attempt yet to push its largest model toward outdoor buyers, and what matters is whether that holds up on pavement and off it.

On the road, there’s a slightly more relaxed vibe to it. A lifted car on chunkier rubber should trade some sharpness for ability and a little more lean in corners. In practice, it does but not quite as much as you might think.

Off the road, it feels far more capable than the rather modest upgrades would have you think. Still the limits deserve honesty here. A 19mm raise is a modest change, and this is still a sporty crossover, not a Defender rival. What’s interesting isn’t whether it can match a dedicated off-roader, it’s whether MINI can give weekend adventurers a car they’ll enjoy driving the other five days of the week.

MINI Countryman Untamed key facts

• Suspension: raised by 15mm, with up to 19mm of added ground clearance depending on market and powertrain
• Wheels and tires: 19-inch wheels with Pirelli Scorpion All Terrain Plus tires
• Chassis: braking, stability control and steering recalibrated for the new setup
• Drivetrain: ALL4 all-wheel drive on S models
• Models: Countryman C, D and S ALL4, plus the electric E and SE ALL4, depending on market
• Towing and loads: tow bar fitted in some markets, with a towing capacity of up to 2,000 kg; roof load of up to 75 kg while driving and 300 kg stationary
• Accessories: optional roof tent co-developed with Autohome and an outdoor equipment range with Helinox, depending on market
• Exterior: redesigned vertical grille with a Dark Steel accent, Untamed logo with a mountain panorama on the C-pillar, Dark Steel finish on emblems, Countryman lettering and underbody protection
• Paint: Hideaway Grey, Nomad Blue, Frozen Nomad Blue, Nanuq White and Midnight Black, with Frozen Nomad Blue the first matte paint in MINI series production
• Production: begins November 2026 at BMW Group Plant Leipzig, with markets worldwide from early 2027
• US pricing: reported to start at $43,900

The post Inside the Off-Road MINI: Countryman Untamed Prototype Drive appeared first on MotoringFile.

The final standings

Carey Lando and Andrea Shaffer won X-Cross on 1,411 points in a modified Subaru Forester Hybrid, their third consecutive class win. Kendra Miller and Tasha Krug were second on 1,393, just 18 points back. The MINI took third, with fellow rookies Amy Hein and Abby Connolly fourth on 1,086. Only four cars were entered in X-Cross, against 41 in the 4×4 class, so third place needs to be read with that in mind.

The gap is the honest part of the story. The MINI finished 262 points behind the winner and on 68 per cent of available points, to the leaders’ 84 and 83. For context, our look at BMW’s history in this event noted that the X2 took second on its 2023 debut and that last year’s X5 finished second in X-Cross on 72 per cent. MINI’s first attempt landed a place lower than both.

On the last day, the margins tightened. By my arithmetic from the published totals, the MINI scored 173 points on Day 8, against 185 for Miller and Krug and the 188 and 187 posted by Lando and Shaffer and by Hein and Connolly. So the final stage was a respectable close, and most of the deficit was built earlier. Our mid-rally report had the car third after Day 4, and it never moved from that position.

The car was the other half of the question. The rally Countryman was a standard Untamed Edition with the smaller 18-inch accessory wheel and a more aggressive tyre, chosen for the taller sidewall rough terrain demands. Subaru’s own release describes its winner as specially prepared, so MINI went to the desert with the less modified hardware. The Countryman completed the course and ran in the pack, which was the pass-fail test we described in our preview of the entry. It did not show that the car collects points faster than a veteran Subaru crew, and nobody should claim it did.

One detail says more about the event than the leaderboard. On Day 8, the X-Cross teams ran the dunes together through gusts of up to 50 mph, taking turns leading to checkpoints and sharing headings and distances. Shaffer said the aim was to make sure every team in the class crossed the finish line. The MINI crew was part of that pod, which is a better advertisement for the Rebelle than any result.

What comes next

The 12th Rebelle Rally runs October 6 to 16, 2027, and registration is open. MINI has not said whether it will return. If it does, the better experiment is the same car with a seasoned crew, so hardware and learning curve can be separated. For now, the MINI Countryman Untamed has a third-place finish, the rookie standing, and a lot left to prove.

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The rally runs from Las Vegas to Glamis, California, over eight days and more than 1,500 miles of the American Southwest, finishing on October 16. This is not a speed contest. Teams navigate with maps, compasses and roadbooks, with no GPS, and the scoring rewards checkpoint accuracy over outright pace. Behind the wheel is Felicia Killman, a rising competitor from Washington state. Navigating is Erika Ferrer of BMW Group Mexico, who has three co-driver championship titles at home.

What makes this more than a marketing exercise is the car’s specification. The rally Countryman is a standard Untamed Edition with two changes: the smaller 18-inch accessory wheel, paired with a more aggressive tyre. The reason is practical. Rough terrain demands a taller sidewall, which gives the tyre more cushion against rocks and ruts and lowers the risk of a pinch flat or a damaged rim. Dropping wheel diameter to gain sidewall height is the standard answer to this problem, and it is a sensible one.

That matters for how we read the result. Rally entries are often so heavily modified that they say little about the car on the showroom floor. Here, the changes are modest and come from the accessory range, which means what Killman and Ferrer are doing is a reasonable proxy for what an owner could do with the same wheel and tyre choice. Ferrer says other teams have told her they weren’t sure they could clear an obstacle until they watched the MINI do it first. That is a more credible endorsement than any brochure line, though it is also a quote from a team member, and worth reading as such.

On paper, it works. In practice, there are limits to what third of four tells us. The class is small, the standings are provisional, and MINI USA notes that final results are still to come. Because the format scores navigation rather than speed, the result says as much about the crew as it does about the car, and Killman is candid that there is room to become more precise and pick up some speed. The tyre is also doing a lot of the heavy lifting. A more aggressive tread and taller sidewall transform what any crossover can tackle, so the credit belongs to the package as much as to the Countryman itself. That might be fine, if the Untamed Edition’s pitch is a capable platform that responds well to the right rubber, but it is worth being clear about which part is which.

Vikash Joshi, MINI USA’s product manager, calls the event a real-world proving ground, and for a brand whose crossover has long been asked to justify its adventure credentials, that is a fair choice of venue. It also fits the history. MINI’s reputation was built on the Monte Carlo wins of the 1960s, and the marque later returned to the sharp end of off-road competition with its Dakar victories in the early 2010s. Putting a Countryman in the Rebelle Rally continues that thread, even if the context has shifted from outright competition to a navigation-and-endurance showcase. It is also a long way from the original MINI Cooper Hardtop that launched the brand in the US in 2002, which rather makes the point about how far the line-up has stretched.

For now, the takeaway is positive with caveats. The Untamed Edition has survived the first half of one of the country’s tougher off-road events in near-stock form, with a respectable standing and a reputation among rivals. The second half will show whether that holds up as the terrain and the fatigue pile on.

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MINI is about 12.9% of BMW Group Automotive volume year to date, and it is carrying more weight than that implies. It also beat the BMW brand in Q3, even while declining.

Why MINI is growing

BMW credits the John Cooper Works models and the MINI Paul Smith Edition for the positive trend. That is a revealing answer: the growth drivers named are a performance trim and a special edition, not a new platform. It fits what we have been covering about MINI turning special editions into drops, though the release does not say how much each contributed.

The other number worth stopping on: 37.2% of MINI’s year-to-date deliveries were fully electric. That works out to roughly 82,000 cars, and about a quarter of the BMW Group’s 314,552 battery electric deliveries from a brand that is around 13% of its volume. The group as a whole sits at about 18.4% battery electric. Both of those are my arithmetic from the release, not figures BMW stated. The electric side of the range runs through the J01 Cooper EV and the J05 Aceman, plus the Countryman SE.

The slowdown inside the growth

Year to date, MINI is up 6.8%. In Q3 it was down 2.4%. Those two numbers cannot both describe the same trend, and the math says the first half was far stronger. Backing out the prior-year figures from the rounded percentages, the first half of 2026 comes to roughly 149,500 deliveries, up about 11.8%, which means the brand has swung from double-digit growth to a small decline in a single quarter.

That is derived arithmetic, so treat the exact figures as approximate. The direction is not in doubt. MINI’s lead over the rest of the group is also narrowing: it was growing in double digits, and now it is merely falling less than the others.

What the release does not tell us

The regional table covers BMW and MINI combined, so there is no MINI-specific split for Europe, China or the Americas. The combined China region fell 24.8% in Q3 and 21.8% year to date, but it is dominated by BMW volume, so it says little about how MINI is faring there. Europe was up 2.7% in Q3 and 4.5% year to date, which hints at where MINI’s strength lies without proving it.

There is no model-level breakdown either. BMW mentions the Countryman Untamed Edition as a source of future momentum, but gives no figure for any specific car.

What to watch

Q4 brings the first full quarter of the Countryman Untamed Edition, and BMW’s October decision on where the next Cooper EV will be built. Then there is the 2027 refresh, which will show whether the first half’s pace was a peak or a baseline.

For now, the numbers say MINI is growing faster than anything else BMW Group owns, and that the growth rate is slowing.

The post MINI Global Sales 2026: Up Almost 7% for the Year appeared first on MotoringFile.

The two tests for any MINI collaboration

First off we wanted to get a sense of how MINI chooses partners, and his answer was a two-part filter. The first test is personal.

“Number one is the chemistry between the partners.” The second is about the customer. A collaboration has to mean something to the person buying the car, not just to the marketing team. Customers see this collaboration as meaningful, and it’s not only for business purposes, or to shout out, or to promote something. To me this is still a vehicle that people buy and they drive.” 

Paul Smith passes both tests. Hampf described a relationship that goes back a long way, one that is “almost like a friendship“, with the designer sending him witty text messages and arriving with new ideas. He said the design process had little friction, and that the mutual respect shows up in the finished car.

On whether the partnership continues, he was warm and careful. He hopes and expects it will, but would not say what form it might take. The Paul Smith edition has only just reached some markets, and he is proud that it is a fully fledged production offering, not a one-off.

A short list, kept short

The discussion went into how the Paul Smith car feels like a true joint effort vs many collaborations in the wider industry that feel like a label added to a product. There was a sense of agreement from Hampf but naturally he didn’t name names. What he did say is that MINI’s approach takes time.

“Collaborations are not an easy one. We take our time to find the right partners. It’s a very short list.” When asked whether he keeps a wish list, he said yes, but not a long one.

A US partner is on the table

One thread stood out. Hampf said he has been talking with colleagues about the possibility of a US-based company as a partner, which makes sense for a brand that treats America as a key market. He framed partner choice as a global question, not a design one: which market would welcome a collaboration with which brand, tested with research and the analytics team before anyone sketches a car. “This is also a global phenomenon.” He did not name any brands, and he made clear it is not a simple call. A brand that works in one country may mean little in another, and MINI has to weigh how each of its markets would respond.

Why too many special editions is a real danger

The sharpest exchange came when the conversation turned to whether MINI risks over-doing it. Hampf agreed that it does.

“It’s easy to over-extend… Yes, it’s dangerous. Especially when you lose the ‘why did they do this.’ So we’re very careful.” 

He counted only “a handful” of companies he could imagine as a good match. He also said sequence matters. After a fashion or customisation partner, MINI should not follow with something too similar in the next couple of years. Another outdoor brand is possible, he said, but not as a reflex. His central point was about the product, not the partner.

“We don’t just want the collaboration. We want the outcome of that collaboration to be a very desirable car.”

He added that he could call five companies tomorrow, and that they would all work with MINI and put their names on a car. That is exactly what he does not want to do.

“If I think I can create something nice with another company, yeah, I’ll do it. But too many partnerships is not good.”

Three lanes, one believable brand

Hampf described MINI’s current identity as a set of segments that each have to feel authentic. Rally and John Cooper Works are the performance lane. Paul Smith covers lifestyle, urban design and fashion. The Countryman Untamed adds outdoor adventure.

His test for any of them is simple.

“I don’t want customers to scratch their head and say, ‘I don’t get it.'” 

That also explains his view of the one-off concepts, such as the Vagabond collaboration in Austria, where he acted as art director and then gave the builders freedom. A one-off can be more extreme than anything he would put into production, he said, and fans reacted strongly to the connection to MINI’s rally history. Those projects are a way to learn what people want, not a preview of the showroom.

Protecting a brand with a long memory

Hampf kept returning to the idea that MINI has more history and a more committed fan base than most brands, and that comes with obligations.

“With a brand like MINI… there is something to protect about it. It’s not ‘oh, let’s try this.'” 

He used Britishness as an example of a theme brands reach for often. It is not easy, he said, and the story has to be handled carefully because it can go wrong.

MINI could fill its range with limited editions and name-brand partners tomorrow, and Hampf knows it. What he described instead is a short list, a possible US partner, and a clear view that every collaboration has to end in a car people want to drive. Paul Smith set the standard, and the next partner will be measured against it.

The post Holger Hampf on How MINI’s Collaborations Work and What Brand Might be Next appeared first on MotoringFile.

Those figures come from BMW of North America’s Q3 2026 sales report, which gives MINI two sentences and a table. The table is where the story is.

The numbers at a glance

The Convertible is closing in on the Cooper Hardtop 2 Door

Year to date, the Cooper Convertible has sold 3,887 cars against 4,021 for the Cooper Hardtop 2 Door, and it has already passed the Cooper Hardtop 4 Door at 3,669. In Q3 alone the gap to the 2 Door was just 70 cars (1,359 against 1,429), and the Convertible beat the 4 Door by six.

A year ago, the Convertible trailed the 2 Door by 2,534 cars through the first nine months (2,756 against 5,290). It has closed nearly all of that.

A summer quarter flatters a drop-top, so the Q3 gain of 29.8% on its own would be easy to wave away. The year-to-date figure of +41.0% is harder to dismiss. That is nine months of growth, not a sunny-weather blip.

MINI’s release offers no explanation, so what follows is analysis, not reporting. Availability and pricing against the Hardtop are the questions worth putting to MINI retailers. What the numbers do show is that the Cooper Convertible now accounts for about a fifth of MINI USA’s volume, which is a lot of weight for a niche body style.

The Countryman problem

The Countryman fell from 3,323 to 2,390 in the quarter. That is 933 fewer sales, more than the entire brand’s decline of 739. Take the Countryman out and the rest of the lineup sold 4,141 cars against 3,947 a year ago, up 4.9%.

That cuts both ways. The Cooper range is not collapsing, but MINI USA leans heavily on one model. The Countryman is still 42.8% of year-to-date volume (8,670 of 20,248), so when it stumbles, the brand’s totals follow. One caveat: the sales chart does not split the Countryman by powertrain, so we cannot say whether the slide is gas, electric or both.

Hardtops: the 4 Door holds, the 2 Door fades

The Cooper Hardtop 2 Door, the car the Cooper name was built on, sold 1,429 in Q3, down 9.2%. Year to date it is down 24.0%, from 5,290 to 4,021. The 4 Door did better, up 2.0% in the quarter, though it is still 11.2% behind for the year.

Combine the two Hardtops and Q3 was down a modest 4.0% (2,782 against 2,899). Year to date they are down 18.4% (7,690 against 9,422). Do the subtraction and the first half was far worse, with Hardtop sales down roughly 25%. That is the closest thing to good news for the core Cooper Hardtop line: the bleeding has slowed. The Clubman, meanwhile, is a rounding error, with one sale all year.

The broader BMW context

BMW brand sales rose 3.4% to 100,210 cars in the same quarter. MINI’s share of BMW of North America’s total volume slipped from 7.0% to 6.1%. One rough piece of arithmetic: spread across the 104 MINI retailers listed in the release, Q3 works out to about 63 cars per retailer, or roughly 21 a month. It uses the current network rather than the Q3 average, so treat it as a sketch, but it shows how little room a small-volume brand has when one model has a bad quarter.

What to watch

Q4 will be decided by the Countryman, which has to recover for the brand’s trend to move back toward flat. The Convertible’s run is the other number to track. If it holds, the Cooper Hardtop 2 Door could lose its place as the best-selling Cooper in the US, which would have been hard to imagine a year ago.

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The short version: it is a weekend car, built for the 80 percent of driving that happens on tarmac, with enough lift, rubber and protection to make a gravel road feel like an invitation rather than a risk.

The MINI Countryman Untamed Edition at a glance

• ALL4 all-wheel drive in the US, on the Countryman S and the electric SE
• A 15 mm suspension lift, adding roughly three-quarters of an inch of ground clearance, with ABS, stability control and steering recalibrated (availability depending on marketing)
• 19-inch wheels with Pirelli Scorpion all-terrain tires, standard in North America
• Frozen Nomad Blue, MINI’s first regular-production matte paint, plus Nomad Blue and Hideaway Grey
• Underbody protection front and rear, a restyled grille, and a mountain-range Untamed logo
• In the US, a $1,600 Untamed Edition package that requires the $3,400 Iconic Trim
• Production in Leipzig from November 2026, with US deliveries expected in the first quarter of 2027

Balance first, rock crawling never

The obvious question for any lifted crossover is how far MINI was willing to go. Hampf’s answer was that the limit was never technical. It was brand.

“Most important to me is to strike a balance of retaining MINI, making something essentially MINI that feels very right as a brand, and then branching out and offering a slightly more extreme character. But that has to be in balance.”

He was blunt about the competition. A Countryman built to out-crawl a Bronco would be a worse Countryman, and a worse MINI.

“Making something that people would compare to a Bronco or a Rubicon doesn’t feel very meaningful. It also comes with sacrifices in comfort.”

His reasoning is about how people actually use these cars. Oversized tires look the part, then show up in noise and vibration on every commute.

“Still 80 percent road use, maybe 20 percent or even less off-road.”

He had a line for the other end of that bargain too. The Untamed has to be believable when the pavement ends.

“One thing that would upset me is if you take it on a gravel trail and it would perform badly.”

The hardware reflects that. A modest lift, all-terrain tires, recalibrated stability and steering systems, and underbody protection add up to a car that handles forest roads and trailheads, not a low-range trail machine. Hampf was happy to say that other vehicles at the Tahoe event were more capable.

A weekend escape, not a build sheet

The Untamed’s job description, in Hampf’s words, is almost domestic.

“I want this to be a weekend escape. I want this to sit in your driveway, ready to go Friday afternoon, two, three nights.”

That framing explains the accessories. MINI developed a roof tent with Autohome and a camping collection with Helinox, and the roof carries 165 lb in motion and 661 lb stationary. It also explains why he is relaxed about owners taking things further. He pointed to the way Mercedes Sprinter vans are customised in the US, often into something unrecognisable from the delivery van underneath.

“Could you go more extreme? Yes, always. But I also leave this to the customers.”

For Hampf, individualisation is already part of MINI ownership. The factory car does not need to start at the extreme end.

A new segment: the family weekend away

The Untamed also opens a door MINI has not really walked through. Hampf described the buyer as a family with a dog, two bikes and a plan for Saturday.

“The family’s weekend escape with your dog, two bikes and a bike rack. That is interesting to me, because MINI so far had its limitations.”

Historically, he said, a MINI was the second or third car in the household, with something bigger taken on the weekend. The Countryman Untamed is an attempt to be the only car that makes the trip, while staying “small and authentic MINI”. It sits alongside the brand’s other lanes: rally and JCW performance, and the lifestyle and fashion world of the Paul Smith edition.

What about the rally history?

It is tempting to draw a line from the Untamed back to the first-generation Countryman’s WRC years. Hampf did not see it that way.

He said he sees the car as more about light off-road activity than competition. Rally heritage, for now, belongs to John Cooper Works. He added “never say never” when pressed on top level rallying, but asked that it not be read as confirmation of anything. A MINI spokesperson added that the brand not only supports the MINI JCW Team in the American Rally Association and the team currently racing in the Rebelle Rally in an Untamed.

What he did describe is a broader brand structure. MINI stands for fun to drive, performance sits under the JCW roof, and adventure is a pillar growing in importance next to it.

“It’s not one or the other. It’s both.”

We’ll have more from our time with Holger Hampf later this week. But in our time with MINI’s head of design, two things are clear to us. First, the Untamed Edition is designed very purposefully to be a light off-roader, with added capability and without losing what makes the Countryman fun to drive on tarmac. Second, MINI’s head of design is looking at the big picture, and he spoke at length about the brand as a whole. How MINI will choose its collaborators, and why he thinks too many special editions can do more harm than good. How the brand will balance its rally and John Cooper Works performance roots, its lifestyle side and a growing adventure pillar. And how MINI plans to keep the current range fresh while the studio works on what comes next. That conversation is coming soon.

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We start with a walkaround of the changes that matter, from the bespoke Pirelli tires on 19-inch wheels and the underbody protection to the 15 mm lift, which brings up to 19 mm of extra ground clearance. Then we tour the interior, where the gray and blue knit dash, dark steel trim and strap details set the edition apart from a standard Countryman.

The second half is the drive. We take the Untamed Edition onto back roads and a light trail in the Sierra Nevada, with DSC off, to see how the longer dampers, bespoke ABS and DSC tuning and new tires work together. The short version: it’s no Jeep, but it’s a capable light off-roader that still drives like a MINI on the road, if a little dulled by the tires.

In the US, the Countryman S ALL4 Untamed Edition costs about $44,000 and the electric SE about $50,000, with availability in the first quarter of 2027. For the full breakdown, including the AUTOHOME roof tent and how the edition differs by market, read our full first drive review.

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That’s the point of the Untamed Edition. It’s the first Countryman that backs up its off-road looks, thanks to a handful of thoughtful changes: up to 19 mm of extra ground clearance, bespoke all-terrain tires and recalibrated traction and stability software. MINI isn’t trying to build a true off-roader here. It has built a capable one that still drives like a MINI on tarmac and through the corners.

We spent our time in the Sierra Nevada on low-traction mountain roads, a rocky light trail and winding mountain tarmac. Here’s what we found.

What the Untamed Edition is

The Untamed Edition is MINI’s first factory off-road take on the U25 Countryman. It is an edition, not a limited run, and it will be offered in almost any Countryman color. Our car was the Countryman S ALL4, which MINI USA will price at about $44,000. The electric SE version follows at roughly $50,000. Production starts in November at BMW Group Plant Leipzig, with cars reaching North American dealers around January.

We first reported an off-road Countryman package in March 2025, then watched a prototype testing in the Rocky Mountains. [Link to the debut article here.] This is the first time we have driven the finished car.

The tires change the game

The Untamed Edition rides on bespoke Pirelli Scorpion All Terrain Plus tires, size 245/45 R19, fitted to exclusive 19-inch Untamed Edition Spoke wheels. The tread is chunky, with big shoulder blocks, and it gives the Countryman grip no MINI we have driven has ever had. On loose surfaces and low-traction climbs it kept finding purchase when we expected it to run out.

It’s worth separating this from what MINI has offered before. The brand has sold an accessory setup for light off-road use, pairing General Grabber AT3 all-terrain tires with 18-inch MINI wheels. The Untamed Edition goes further, with a larger wheel and a more aggressive tire that delivers even more grip.

The trade-off is small. There is some added road noise from the all-terrain rubber, but it is modest. A 45-profile sidewall is also a road-first choice on a car with trail ambitions, so we would like more time on sharp rock before calling it a non-issue.

What MINI changed underneath

The lift is 15 millimeters, which MINI says gives up to 19 millimeters of extra ground clearance depending on market and powertrain. It comes from longer dampers. The springs are the same as a standard Countryman, which is an interesting choice and explains why the car still feels like a MINI.

The rest is protection and software. The Untamed Edition gets front and rear skid plates, a redesigned rear diffuser and matte black protective cladding on the wheel arches and sills, with a dashed texture molded into the arch surfaces to shrug off gravel. The ABS, DSC and steering calibration are all bespoke, tuned to work with the new tires, and ALL4 all-wheel drive is standard. MINI has not published approach, departure or ramp angles yet.

Driving impressions off-road

Nineteen millimeters of increased ground clearance sounds minimal, and it would be easy to dismiss. On the light trail sections, though, it was enough to change the approach angle in a way you could feel and give you confidence where you’d normally have little. While this is not a true off-roader, I was surprised and some of the approach angles I could achieve. That said MINI could have done a bit more in terms of underbody reinforcements. While the skid-plate is modified, it’s subtle and is still made of plastic. Furthermore we scraped the bottom of the bumper on some approaches (which you can see in the video) which had us wondering if MINI should have re-profiled the bottom of the air intake slightly.

All that said traction is the real headline, and the lift is a helpful bonus.

That sandy hill is a good example. With DSC off, the car stayed composed and kept moving, and the quick steering that makes a Countryman fun on tarmac works just as well here. You know where each contact patch is, and the car is nimble when the surface keeps changing. The articulation surprised us more than anything else. For a car based on a street platform, MINI has engineered wheel travel well beyond what we expected, and our photos show it working across a granite slab, one rear wheel up on the rock while the opposite front sits lower.

This is not a Jeep, and MINI never claims it is. It is a capable light off-roader, which is something we have never been able to say about the brand before.

Driving impressions on-road

The increase in ride height and off-road tires if the Untamed Edition contributed to a slightly more relaxed feeling Countryman. There’s slightly more body roll in corners of the raised US spec version and a little less sharpness on turn-in. But these are small tradeoffs that some might actually prefer. The longer dampers allow more travel and a bit more comfort while the tires soak-up imperfections creating the most comfortable Countryman we’ve ever driven. Critically it still felt like the Countryman we know; predictable and eager.

Design and interior

In person, the Untamed Edition looks better than the spec sheet suggests. The new grille uses a vertical pattern that has a hint of Jeep to it. The dark steel trim and matte black graphics look modest alone, and together with the three new colors (Hideaway Grey, Nomad Blue and Frozen Nomad Blue) they make a noticeably different Countryman. Our car wore Frozen Nomad Blue, the first matte paint ever offered by MINI in global series production, and it is a bold choice for a car meant for gravel roads. But as Head of MINI Design Holger Hampf explained it works particularly well with the U25’s surfaces.

Inside, MINI made some thoughtful choices. The dash and door panels use what MINI calls “Millennial Melange”. Rather than a flat color, the yarn uses a bespoke two-tone woven design combining a dark heather grey surface layer stitched tightly over an intense, rich blue base. This reveals glimpses of blue undercurrents depending on how light hits the cabin textures.

The standard sport seats are finished in Nightshade Blue sport seats alongside Cornflower Blue contrast details.

For the interior trim MINI uses the same Dark Steel we see outside. It completely replaces the standard “Vibrant Silver” accents found on other Countryman variants and creates a more technical and robust off-road look.

MINI’s AUTOHOME tent Completes the package

MINI is selling the outdoor idea as a package. The roof tent, developed with Italian specialist AUTOHOME, is a first for the North American market, where it will be offered as an aftersales accessory for about $5,000. Elsewhere you can order it direct from AUTOHOME for € 5,049.00.

The tent is built around a 100 percent fiberglass shell, with an insulated sandwich base reinforced by two steel C-shaped bars. The Medium size, which sleeps two adults and one child, measures 145 by 210 centimeters when open and 150 centimeters tall inside. Closed, it stands 30 centimeters above the roof. It weighs about 65 kilograms including the ladder, and clamps to the roof rack with four steel clamps. Two gas springs raise it automatically. The fabric is AIRTEX, which AUTOHOME describes as weather-proof and tear-proof, and the tent comes with a high-density mattress and two pillows. Each side has a door with a roll-up mosquito net, which zips into a window, and a full-size rear opening adjusts in six positions. Inside you get a touch-sensitive three-LED light with a 12-volt battery, an elastic roof net and two fold-away pockets. The height-adjustable aluminum ladder includes a safety clamp and a zip cover.

In my brief time with it, I found the tent surprisingly sturdy and well built, despite how light it is. At 6’2″, I had no trouble getting comfortable inside, and getting in and out was simple.

Even so, weight is the figure to watch. At about 65 kilograms, the tent leaves little headroom under the Countryman’s 75-kilogram roof load rating while driving, but plenty under the 300 kilograms allowed when stationary, which is what matters once you’re asleep up there. The 30-centimeter closed height also adds to the car’s overall height, so check garage and parking clearances before you commit. With the optional tow hitch, the car can pull up to 2,000 kilograms.

In addition, MINI has partnered with outdoor equipment specialist HELINOX to create an exclusive camping collection. Folding chairs and camping tables are all part of the package and like the AUTOHOME tent, they combine functionality, lightweight construction and outstanding build quality.

Specification and pricing differs wildly by market

The Untamed Edition won’t be identical everywhere. MINI says availability of variants, powertrains and equipment varies by market, and even the headline ground clearance gain of up to 19 millimeters depends on market and powertrain. In North America, the edition arrives as the Countryman S ALL4 at about $44,000 and the electric SE at roughly $50,000, with the tent sold separately as an accessory. But in Europe and elsewhere the Untamed arrives a bit more tamed. For instance in the EU the 15 mm lift is only offered on the electric E and SE ALL4. The all-terrain tyres are optional across the board, and the tow bar is optional too.

MINI hasn’t explained the split. Our read, and it is analysis rather than anything MINI has said, is that it comes down to CO2. A taller Countryman on knobbier tyres carries more drag and rolling resistance, which would push WLTP emissions up on the petrol and diesel cars as every gram counts against EU fleet targets. An EV pays for the same changes in range, not grams and there’s no regulation against losing a mile or two of range.

Our verdict

The Untamed Edition is a convincing step for MINI, and a far more serious answer than the Adventure packages that added all-terrain tires without changing the car underneath. It suits buyers who want a Countryman for rough mountain roads, gravel and the occasional trail without giving up daily usability. It will not satisfy anyone who expects a rock crawler, but it’s hard to imagine anyone thinking MINI would offer one.

What MINI has done instead is build a car with more capability on the trail without spoiling the on-road driving experience we all love. The lasting impression I took away is that MINI has found a formula so convincing it feels like it should have been offered on the Countryman all along. In markets like North America, it might just become a smash hit.

We still want to know the approach and departure angles, what the SE brings to the party, and how it holds up over longer, tougher terrain. We will have more drives and impressions soon. Everything we have covered so far lives in our U25 MINI Countryman hub, and the history of MINI’s off-road concepts explains why it took this long to get here.

The post MINI Countryman Untamed Edition First Drive: Capable Off-Road, Still a MINI appeared first on MotoringFile.

The surprises don’t stop there. In the UK, the electric SE, the only British Untamed with the full hardware, costs just £250 more than the petrol S. Europe’s version can tow more than America’s, despite having less capability as standard. And going Untamed costs roughly the same on both sides of the Atlantic, even though American buyers get significantly more for their money.

We covered the car itself and US pricing. Now that MINI USA, MINI UK and MINI Germany have all published their details, here’s how the three markets compare.

The specification split at a glance

What doesn’t change

The design and interior are the same everywhere. Every Untamed Edition gets the vertical Dark Steel grille, the underbody protection elements, the textured matt black films, the C-pillar mountain logo and the 19-inch Untamed Edition Spoke wheels. Inside, every car gets the same Vescin Nightshade Blue sport seats, with Vescin Vintage Brown and Vescin Black as alternatives. MINI UK calls them JCW sports seats, but that’s a naming convention, not different hardware.

The colour palette is global too. Hideaway Grey and Nomad Blue are joined by Nanuq White and Midnight Black. Frozen Nomad Blue, the first matt finish in MINI series production, arrives worldwide at the same time.

The differences are all mechanical, and they’re the ones that matter.

North America: the complete version

North America gets the Untamed Edition as MINI clearly intended it. Both US models, the Countryman S ALL4 and the all-electric SE ALL4, come with the 15 mm lift, the Untamed-specific chassis calibration and Pirelli Scorpion All Terrain Plus tires on 19-inch Untamed Edition Spoke wheels as standard. A factory trailer hitch is also standard, rated to tow 3,500 pounds.

There’s no front-wheel-drive Untamed in the US, which removes the awkward mismatch elsewhere between the off-road look and the drivetrain underneath. Every American Untamed has ALL4, the lift and the tires. It’s the only market where you can’t accidentally buy the costume without the hardware.

United Kingdom: one fully realised car

The UK gets four powertrains, the C, S, E and SE, but the hardware is spread thin. MINI UK fits the 15 mm lift only to the SE. The all-terrain tires are optional, and only on the S and SE. The C and the front-drive E get the Untamed design and interior, but neither the lift nor the tyres.

That makes the SE the only UK Untamed with the full specification, and the pricing makes the case for it. At £40,775, the SE is just £250 more than the petrol S at £40,525. For that, the SE gets the lift the S doesn’t, plus electric running costs. If you’re buying an Untamed in Britain for what it can do, rather than how it looks, the SE is the obvious choice.

The tow bar is optional, rated at 2,000 kg. The AUTOHOME roof tent is sold directly by AUTOHOME rather than through MINI retailers.

Europe: the lift is for EVs only

Mainland Europe has the broadest range of powertrains, with the C, D, S ALL4, E and SE ALL4 depending on market, and the narrowest hardware spread. The 15 mm lift is only offered on the electric E and SE ALL4. The all-terrain tyres are optional across the board, and the tow bar is optional too.

MINI hasn’t explained the split. Our read, and it is analysis rather than anything MINI has said, is that it comes down to CO2. A taller Countryman on knobbier tyres carries more drag and rolling resistance, which would push WLTP emissions up on the petrol and diesel cars as every gram counts against EU fleet targets. An EV pays for the same changes in range, not grams and there’s no regulation against losing a mile or two of range.

The result is that a European Countryman C or D Untamed on standard tyres is mechanically very close to the regular car. It’s the F60 Untamed formula again: a strong design edition wearing an adventurous name.

One other difference worth noting. The tow rating of up to 2,000 kg works out to roughly 4,400 pounds, comfortably above the US figure of 3,500 pounds. However that reflects different rating standards on each side of the Atlantic rather than different hardware.

Pricing by market

Comparing across currencies is never clean, but the structure tells a story. In the US, the Untamed content itself costs $1,600. It does require Iconic Trim with the Comfort Package Plus ($3,400), so the real step up from a base $38,900 S ALL4 is $5,000. In Germany, the Untamed Edition is a flat €4,700 supplement, including VAT. Switzerland follows the same pattern at CHF 4,990.

On that basis, the headline cost of going Untamed is broadly similar in the US and Europe. What that money buys isn’t. An American buyer gets the lift, the tyres and the hitch included. A German buyer of a petrol or diesel Untamed gets neither the lift nor, unless they pay extra, the tires.

Our take

The Untamed Edition is the rare MINI that works best in America. That makes sense, given that it was tested in the Rocky Mountains, revealed at Lake Tahoe and debuted in the Nevada desert at the Rebelle Rally. Given what we heard at the car’s launch, MINI built this car primarily for North American buyers, and the US spec reflects that, with no front-drive versions, no lift-less versions and no tyre option to forget to tick.

In the UK and Europe, the Untamed is a more nuanced proposition. Buy the E or SE, add the all-terrain tires, and you get essentially the same car Americans do. Buy anything else and you get a very handsome Countryman with an off-road look it can’t fully back up. The design is identical everywhere. The capability isn’t.

The post MINI Countryman Untamed Edition: Why North America Gets the Better Car appeared first on MotoringFile.