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.

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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.

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We argued back in July that this entry was really a preview of the off-road Countryman, and that the rally would be its first public exam. Now the car has a name, a [US price of $43,900](LINK: pricing story) and a starting line. What it doesn’t have yet is proof. That’s what the next ten days are for.

Why the Rebelle is the right test

The Rebelle Rally isn’t a speed event. It’s a navigation competition for women, scored on precision rather than pace, and it punishes bad judgment far more than a lack of horsepower. That makes it a smart venue for a car like the Untamed Edition, which was never meant to be a Baja racer. It was built to be a slightly more capable Countryman that looks the part, and the Rebelle tests exactly that kind of capability. Can it get there, keep going and get back?

It’s also a test with a scoreboard. BMW Group has been running this playbook since 2019, starting with a Rolls-Royce Cullinan and then a BMW X2 in 2023, an X3 in 2024 and an X5 in 2025. Last year’s nearly production-spec X5 took the Bone Stock Award and finished second overall in the X-Cross class. That’s the bar MINI inherits. Matching it won’t be easy.

Meet the team

The driver is Felicia Killman of Lacey, Washington, an American Rally Association competitor and longtime MINI enthusiast. She has co-driven at regional and national level with the grassroots team Lab Rat Garage, and has navigated nationally for the MINI JCW Rally Team. That second point matters. The JCW team has been quietly stacking up podiums in American rallying, and Killman brings that institutional knowledge into the Countryman.

In the navigator’s seat is Erika Ferrer, from BMW Group Corporate Communications in Mexico. It’s easy to raise an eyebrow at a comms staffer in a competition car, but Ferrer’s résumé shuts that down quickly. She managed championship rally teams before moving into the co-driver’s seat. She has won three consecutive regional rally co-driver championships in Mexico, and she has called notes for rally champion Benito Guerra at La Carrera Panamericana. In a rally where navigation is the whole game, that’s the more important seat.

The pairing is deliberate. Killman brings driving and MINI-community roots, Ferrer brings navigation, and both have spent the run-up training on dunes, rock and loose surfaces, along with plenty of map-and-compass work.

How the car was prepared

A BMW Group engineering team led by James Wallace, Dennis Heaphy and Eran Garma prepared the entry alongside their day jobs. Wallace describes the process as thinking through every bracket, mount and panel for what happens far from pavement, then testing, adjusting and testing again. It’s an unglamorous answer, and the right one. Rally cars rarely fail in dramatic ways. They fail because something small shakes loose on day four.

The supplier list hints at what’s been added. Thule, Pelican Cases, Morimoto Lighting, Peak Design and GoPro point to roof storage, secure cargo, auxiliary lighting and cameras. MINI Tire Center and Heinlein Racing Development cover the rubber and the rally-prep side, and MINI Motoring Protection is funding travel, shipping and media support. MINI hasn’t said which class the car is entered in, or how far it sits from showroom spec. Our read, and it’s only a read, is that it’s a lightly outfitted Untamed rather than a purpose-built special. That’s the version that would mean the most to buyers.

Underneath, the fundamentals are those of the production car. That means the 15 mm lift, up to 19 mm more ground clearance depending on market and powertrain, Pirelli Scorpion All Terrain Plus tyres on 19-inch wheels, ALL4 all-wheel drive, and ABS, DSC and steering calibrated for the new setup. The Rebelle will reveal more about that calibration work than any press drive could.

The heritage MINI is leaning on

MINI’s release reaches for the obvious history: the original Mini Cooper S’s Monte Carlo victories in 1964, 1965 and 1967, and the brand’s Dakar success with X-Raid. Both are legitimate, but neither had much to do with a showroom Countryman. Monte Carlo was won by small, light cars outfoxing bigger ones on tarmac and ice. The Dakar wins came from a purpose-built racer that shared little more than a silhouette with the road car.

The Rebelle is different, and arguably more relevant to anyone actually shopping for a Countryman. This is a production-based crossover, driven by a privateer-rooted crew, on terrain a buyer might plausibly try to reach on a long weekend. If the Untamed Edition gets through 1,500 GPS-free miles without drama, that will say more about the car than any heritage reel.

How to follow along

Live tracking starts October 9 on the Rebelle Rally live page, with coverage on the rally’s YouTube, Instagram and Facebook channels and daily email updates from the organisers. MINI USA will post updates on Instagram and TikTok, and we’ll be following the team’s progress here throughout the event.

Our take

Entering the Rebelle is a confident move. It’s one thing to put a mountain logo on a C-pillar and a lift under the car. It’s another to send that car into ten days of desert in front of an audience that knows exactly what the BMW X5 achieved last year. MINI has given itself a public pass-fail test on day one of the Untamed Edition’s life.

We think it’ll pass. The production hardware is sensible, the preparation sounds methodical, and the crew is stronger than a lifestyle-marketing exercise would need. A clean, quiet finish would do more for the Untamed Edition’s credibility than a podium would. If MINI gets a podium as well, the name might finally start to sound earned.

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MINI USA will offer the edition on two cars: the Countryman S ALL4 Untamed Edition and the all-electric Countryman SE ALL4 Untamed Edition. Pricing for the SE ALL4 isn’t official but we hear that will be around $50,000.

How the $43,900 breaks down

What $1,600 actually buys

This is where the value case gets hard to argue with. The Untamed content includes:

• The 15 mm suspension lift, standard in the US, with increased ground clearance and an Untamed-specific chassis calibration
• 19-inch Untamed Edition Spoke wheels with Pirelli Scorpion All Terrain Plus tyres
• Dark Steel exterior details, including the grille surround, badging and underbody protection elements
• Textured protective films on the wheel arches, side sills and bonnet
• Exclusive Hideaway Grey and Nomad Blue paint
• Vescin Nightshade Blue sport seats with grey knit surfaces and Cornflower Blue accents
• Untamed logos, a redesigned centre console storage box, and rubber floor and luggage mats

Put that in context. A set of quality 19-inch wheels and all-terrain tyres from the aftermarket would likely cost more than $1,600 on its own. That’s before a lift, before any electronics calibration and before anything changes inside. Until now, MINI’s own answer to this buyer was the port-installed Adventure packages, which we described as grip, not engineering. The Untamed Edition costs barely more than a dress-up package and delivers engineered hardware.

The standard factory trailer hitch adds to the case. In the US, the Untamed Edition can tow up to 3,500 pounds. Roof load capacity is 165 pounds on the move and 661 pounds when parked, which matters once a tent goes up top.

The catch: there’s no stripped-down Untamed

The one real caveat is how you get there. Because Iconic Trim with the Comfort Package Plus is required, the true price of entry is $43,900, not $38,900 plus $1,600. If you want the lift, wheels and tyres without the premium trim, there’s no way to spec it.

That’s a reasonable trade, though. Iconic with Comfort Package Plus is where most well-equipped Countryman S ALL4s end up anyway, and it fits the car’s role as a do-everything road-trip machine. It just means the Untamed Edition is a well-equipped car first and a bargain second.

Where the price climbs

The options list is short. The Comfort Package Max is $900, a universal garage door opener is $250, and a space-saver spare is $300. Tick that last one. A car built for forest roads and trailheads is exactly the car you don’t want on a tyre repair kit, miles from pavement. With all three, an S ALL4 Untamed comes to $45,350 before destination, or $46,700 delivered.

Buyers can also choose Midnight Black Metallic or Nanuq White Metallic with a body-colour contrast roof, and Vescin Vintage Brown or Vescin Black upholstery as alternatives to the edition-specific choices.

One notable absence is Frozen Nomad Blue, the matt finish MINI calls the first in its series production. It doesn’t appear on the US price sheet, and MINI USA hasn’t said whether it will arrive later. For a car whose launch imagery leans so heavily on that colour, it’s a conspicuous omission.

The AUTOHOME roof tent: expect around $5,000

The AUTOHOME roof tent is sold separately, and US pricing is still being finalised. We expect it to land at roughly $5,000. That’s in line with a hard-shell, handcrafted Italian tent with gas-strut opening, and it would put a fully optioned S ALL4 Untamed with the tent at roughly $51,700 delivered.

That’s real money. But it’s still a turnkey, factory-backed weekend camper for less than many competitors charge before they’ve added a single accessory. We’ll update with confirmed tent pricing as soon as MINI USA releases it.

What about the SE ALL4?

MINI USA will announce pricing for the electric Countryman SE ALL4 Untamed Edition later. Expect it to follow the S ALL4’s structure, with the same $1,600 Untamed content on top of the SE ALL4’s higher base price. We’ll know for sure when MINI publishes it.

Our take

MINI could easily have charged a premium for this car. It has the look, a real mechanical story and a buyer base that has been asking for exactly this for years. Instead it priced the Untamed content at $1,600, less than many cosmetic packages, and included a lift, tuned electronics and proper all-terrain rubber in that figure.

The required trim stops it from being a cheap car, and the missing matt paint is a shame. But for anyone who was going to buy a well-equipped Countryman S ALL4 anyway, the Untamed Edition is close to an automatic upgrade. US deliveries begin in early 2027.stination and Handling charge.

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It also lines up almost point for point with what we first reported in 2025 and have tracked through Colorado testing and the Rebelle Rally entry. The question was never whether MINI would build it. It was whether MINI would build a more capable Countryman or just a better-dressed one. The answer depends heavily on where you live.

Mostly what we expected and a few things we didn’t

Our original reporting described a subtle lift, unique wheels, all-terrain tires and revised trim inside and out, and Holger Hampf later confirmed the car was engineered with off-road intent from the start. All of that holds. The lift is 15 mm, the wheels are bespoke 19s, the tires are a Pirelli developed specifically for this car, and the design changes run well beyond a graphics pack.

The suspension is where that reporting mattered most. We expected a reworked, firmer setup with a subtle lift rather than a pile of bolt-on hardware, and that’s what MINI delivered. It paired the lift with recalibrated ABS, DSC and steering, all tuned around the new ride height and tires. In our look at what might be under the skin, we explored how far MINI could push the concept, from terrain modes to more ambitious suspension options. MINI took the simpler path. For a Countryman that still has to be a comfortable daily driver, that’s a defensible choice.

The name is the real surprise. MINI’s own teasers leaned on Rugged Edition, a badge MINI South Africa had already used on a 100-unit paint-and-tires run in January. Instead, MINI has brought back Untamed, a name we once called arguably the worst MINI had ever used when it appeared on the F60 Countryman. Fourteen thousand miles in our own F60 Untamed won us over on the car, if not the name. Still, the old car was mechanically identical to any other Countryman. This one finally gives the name something to live up to.

The technical changes are small numbers with real consequences

The suspension lift is 15 mm, which translates to up to 19 mm of additional ground clearance depending on market and powertrain. MINI doesn’t break down where the extra 4 mm comes from, but the taller all-terrain tyre is the likely contributor. Approach and breakover angles are improved, though MINI hasn’t published figures yet.

For perspective, the 2020 X-Raid Countryman ran a 40 mm lift. This is a measured step rather than an overlanding kit, and that’s deliberate. It keeps the Countryman a Countryman, with the U25’s on-road composure largely intact, rather than turning it into a caricature of something from Moab.

The tires matter more than the lift. The Pirelli Scorpion All Terrain Plus is new, and it replaces the approach MINI has taken until now: port-installed General Grabber AT3s on the US Adventure packages and the South African car. We described those as grip, not engineering. The difference here is that ABS, DSC and steering have been tuned around the tyre, so the car’s electronics actually know what’s on the corners.

There’s a tension in the wheel choice. Nineteen inches is a lot of wheel for an all-terrain tyre, since sidewall is exactly what you want when airing down on rocks or washboard. It’s also what preserves steering precision and handling on tarmac, where these cars will spend nearly all their lives. MINI chose the road, and for most buyers that’s the right call.

Then there’s all-wheel drive. MINI’s release leans hard on ALL4, but three of the five launch variants (C, D and E) are front-wheel drive. Only the S ALL4 and SE ALL4 send power to both axles. A front-drive Untamed on all-terrain rubber will be perfectly happy on a gravel road to a trailhead. It is not the car the dust-cloud press photo implies.

Load ratings round it out. An optional tow bar allows up to 2,000 kg, while roof load is 75 kg on the move and 300 kg when parked. That static figure is the one that matters, because it’s what makes the new roof tent viable with two adults inside.

The roof tent and camping kit are the lifestyle play

The tent is developed with Italian specialist AUTOHOME and opens in seconds thanks to integrated gas struts. The hard shell and tent are handcrafted in Italy, with a glass-fibre reinforced construction for insulation and durability, plus panoramic openings. MINI and AUTOHOME aren’t new partners; an F60 Countryman carried one of their tents through the Swedish archipelago in 2022, back when those accessories simply weren’t sold in North America. Given that this car’s strongest specification is the North American one, it would be odd if that remained true.

MINI has also partnered with HELINOX on a camping collection of folding chairs and tables in Untamed design. Pleasant, lightweight, and exactly the kind of thing that looks better in a launch video than it will ever matter to the car.

How the Untamed Edition differs by market

This is where the story gets interesting. Depending on the market, the Untamed Edition will be offered on the Countryman C, D, S ALL4, E and SE ALL4. There’s no JCW. But the hardware that actually makes it more capable is split sharply by region.

North America gets the real thing. Every Untamed variant can have the lift, and the all-terrain tires come standard. MINI USA hasn’t confirmed its variants, but since it doesn’t sell the Countryman C or the diesel, expect the US lineup to centre on the S ALL4 and SE ALL4. That’s fitting. The Rocky Mountain testing, the Rebelle Rally entry and the Lake Tahoe dateline all tell you which market this car was built for.

Europe is more complicated. The lift is reserved for the electric models, and the tires are an option. Our read, and it is analysis rather than anything MINI has said, is that this comes down to emissions. A taller Countryman on knobbier tires carries more drag and rolling resistance, which would push WLTP CO2 figures up on the combustion cars at a time when every gram counts against fleet targets. An EV pays for the same changes in range, not grams.

The consequence is that a European Countryman C Untamed on standard tires is, mechanically, very close to a regular Countryman C. It gets the grille, the underbody pieces and the interior, but not the lift. That’s essentially the F60 Untamed formula again: a strong design edition wearing an adventurous name.

Range deserves a note too. MINI quotes the standard WLTP figures for the electric models, 454 to 500 km for the Countryman E and 424 to 467 km for the SE ALL4, which reflect the range increase that arrived with March 2026 production. No Untamed-specific numbers have been published. With a lift and all-terrain tires, expect the real-world figure to land at the low end of those ranges or below.

The exterior finally looks the part

The design centrepiece is a reworked front grille with vertically oriented geometry and angular inserts, framed by a surround in a new accent finish called Dark Steel. It makes the front end look more upright and more purposeful, which is precisely what the U25’s face needed for this role.

Below that, new side sills, redesigned front and rear underbody protection elements and a newly sculpted rear diffuser add bulk. Textured matt black protective films cover the wheel arches, side sills and the Power Dome, the raised section of the bonnet, guarding against stone chips. Films are a clever way to add texture and protection without the weight or bulk of plastic cladding, though they’re protection from gravel, not from rocks. How robust those underbody elements actually are is one of the first things we want to see in person.

Dark Steel is doing a lot of work here. It covers the MINI emblems front and rear, the Countryman lettering, the grille surround and the underbody pieces. The Untamed logo, now a stylised mountain motif, sits on the C-pillar rather than splashed across the side scuttles as it was on the F60.

The new 19-inch Untamed Edition Spoke wheel takes its cue from classic off-road steel wheels, with five heavy spokes, technical fastening details and a Dark Steel MINI wordmark on the centre cap. It’s the most convincing wheel design MINI has done for the U25 so far.

Five colours are offered. Hideaway Grey, Nomad Blue and Frozen Nomad Blue are exclusive to the edition, with Nanuq White and Midnight Black also available, and roofs in Glazed White or Jet Black. Frozen Nomad Blue is the first matt finish in MINI series production, and it suits the Countryman’s surfacing, making its contours read more clearly than any gloss colour does.

Inside, outdoor gear is the brief

The cabin borrows from technical outdoor equipment. The headline is a set of Vescin Nightshade Blue sport seats, combining perforated Vescin with knitted surfaces at the shoulders and headrests. The knit pattern is inspired by rock formations, with Cornflower Blue piping and stitching and an integrated Untamed mountain logo.

Knit continues on the dashboard and door panels in a new Millennial Melange tone, dark grey over a blue base. Interior accents switch from Vibrant Silver to Dark Steel, with Cornflower Blue on the steering wheel strap and spoke. The centre console storage box gets a chunkier shape with elastic retaining straps that reference backpacks and climbing gear. Rubber floor mats and a matching boot mat, with a three-dimensional rock pattern, are the kind of practical detail that actually earns its place in an adventure edition.

It’s a thoughtful interior, if a more restrained one than the F60 Untamed’s Highland Green leather, which remains some of the best seating MINI has offered. Whether Vescin and knit can match that is something only time in the car will answer.

Production, timing and price

Production begins at BMW Group Plant Leipzig in November 2026, with market launch in early 2027. Pricing hasn’t been announced. With the Countryman S ALL4 already at $40,500 before destination, our expectation is that a US-spec Untamed S ALL4 lands in the mid-$40,000s.

Our take

This is the Countryman MINI needed. Nobody was asking for a MINI-badged Defender or Wrangler. What many owners and shoppers wanted was a Countryman that’s slightly more capable on a forest road or a snowy trailhead, and one that looks the part when it gets there. The Untamed Edition delivers exactly that, and it’s smarter for knowing where to stop.

The name is the regret. It was a misstep on the F60 special edition, and it hasn’t improved with a second outing. It’s the kind of word that might land differently for non-native English speakers, but to native ears it tries far too hard. A car this carefully judged deserved a name with the same restraint.

Everything else is a genuine upgrade. The wheels look fantastic, and even the graphics, from the textured films to the mountain logo on the C-pillar, are more interesting than they had any right to be. Frozen Nomad Blue gives MINI its first matt paint at series level, and it suits the car. Most importantly, the mechanical changes underneath aren’t there for show. The lift, the tires and the retuned electronics are critical to what this car is meant to do, and they’re what separates it from the dress-up editions that came before.

The market split says the most

MINI has spent more than a decade building off-road credibility it never sold, from the Dakar-winning X-Raid Countryman to the Beachcomber and Clubman Scrambler concepts. The Untamed Edition is the first time that story reaches a dealer lot with real engineering attached, and the fact that North America gets the most complete version is telling. MINI clearly sees this car as a way to compete for buyers who would otherwise look at a Subaru Crosstrek Wilderness or a lifted rival, not just as another trim.

It won’t satisfy anyone hoping for air suspension, terrain modes or a JCW version. But with the next Countryman moving to Neue Klasse in 2032, the more interesting question is whether Untamed becomes a permanent part of the range rather than a one-generation experiment. If it sells in America the way MINI clearly expects, it will be.

We’ll have first-hand photos and impressions from the debut shortly.

2027 MINI Countryman Untamed Edition Photo Gallery

The post MINI Countryman Untamed Edition: The Off-Road Countryman Is Finally Here appeared first on MotoringFile.

The California leg starts in Monterey, heads north along the Pacific Coast Highway to Sonoma, then cuts east toward Lake Tahoe. MINI lists the Golden Gate Bridge, the Napa vineyards and the climb through Carson Pass among the highlights. Each day follows the familiar Rise & Rally format: breakfast, activities, music and a morning send-off before the drive.

Starting in Monterey is a nice bit of symmetry. The first MINI Takes the States launched there in August 2006, at Pirate’s Cove after the Monterey Historic races, to celebrate the arrival of the MINI GP. Over 3,300 owners signed up for that one, and it ran 3,123 miles to Connecticut. Twenty years later, the rally begins where it began.

The remix is a soundtrack

The musical theme is delivered through the YouTube Music Foundry Concert Series, one headline show per weekend. Tonight at Lake Tahoe it is Sugar Ray, with The Paradox opening. Smash Mouth plays Lake Placid on October 24 with Momo Boyd, and Fitz and The Tantrums close the series in Key West on November 14, with 8RO8 opening.

That lineup reads as an analysis point, not a stated strategy: Sugar Ray, Smash Mouth and Fitz and The Tantrums are acts that will land squarely with owners who bought into the brand in the R53 era. Whether that is clever audience matching or a nostalgia tour with a sponsor logo on it depends on how the crowds respond. On paper, it works.

This year’s cause is Best Friends Animal Society, with opportunities to support its work at stops throughout the series.

What three weekends gain, and what they cost

The new structure is the real story. Kate Alini, Head of Marketing, Product and Strategy at MINI USA, framed it as three distinct weekends in three different parts of the country. Owners can register for one, two or all three. We covered the thinking behind that when MINI announced the 2026 format and again when registration opened.

The case for it is practical. Few people can clear nine days for a cross-country run. In 2024, nearly 2,000 owners took part but 958 completed the entire route, with an average of 650 MINIs on the road each day. Most participants were already doing MTTS in pieces. A weekend format simply admits that and lowers the barrier for newcomers, of whom 2024 had 517.

The cost is the thing that made the old format mythical: one unbroken line of cars crossing a continent, with the convoy itself becoming the event. Three self-contained weekends will give you good roads and good company, but they are three rallies, not one epic. MINI is betting that access beats scale of journey. Given the numbers, it is a defensible bet, if not a free one.

What to watch

California is only the opening act. The New York weekend runs Buffalo, Syracuse and Lake Placid, past Niagara Falls and into the Adirondacks. Florida goes Fort Myers to Miami and down the Overseas Highway to Key West. Anyone still wanting in can register at MINITAKESTHESTATES.com. The real test of the remix will be whether the second and third weekends fill as well as the first, and MINI has not yet shared California turnout figures.

We will be following the rest of MTTS 2026 here on MotoringFile.

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Part one: the motorsport

Monte Carlo: the giant-killer

It started with the classic Mini Cooper S, which earned global fame in the 1960s by outmanoeuvring and outlasting far more powerful cars on the toughest rally stages in the world. John Cooper’s hot-rodded Minis won the Monte Carlo Rally in 1964, 1965 and 1967 (we covered the first of them in 60 years ago, when MINI shocked the world). That underdog audacity became MINI’s spiritual core, and it is still the story the brand tells about itself.

The 2006 Odyssey: a stock car across Africa

The best evidence that a modern MINI could handle real terrain came from a road trip, not a race. In 2006, MINI took three nearly stock Cooper S hatchbacks from Johannesburg, South Africa, to Oxford, England: roughly 13,000 km across 10 countries in 49 days. The route included harsh terrain in Sudan and northern Kenya, which cost the cars bent rims and battered suspensions. All three finished.

It was not a cushy PR stunt. It was proof that the production platform had untapped toughness, which MINI then did nothing with.

X-Raid and Dakar: the dominance

Dakar is where the off-road reputation was properly built. X-Raid, the private German outfit founded by Sven Quandt, first partnered with MINI in 2011 and brought the Countryman-based MINI ALL4 Racing to the world’s toughest off-road race. The result was close to unstoppable: four consecutive Dakar victories from 2012 to 2015. The John Cooper Works Buggy followed, swapping the all-wheel-drive layout for a rear-wheel-drive, long-travel setup better suited to the desert, and it added another win in 2020.

The cars were nearly bulletproof in a race that chews up the best-prepared entries, and they reshaped MINI’s image from street-smart urban icon to a badge that could also mean endurance. The problem is that none of it translated to a showroom. MINI sold a reputation it had no product for.

Part two: the concepts

The 2010 Beachcomber: the open-air promise

The Beachcomber was a homage to the Mini Moke, built on the R60 Countryman platform with a raised ride height to improve its off-road potential. It had no doors and no conventional roof, relying on a removable soft top and lightweight side panels, with reinforced A- and D-pillars to keep the structure sound. All-wheel drive and that elevated stance hinted at light trail capability without overpromising.

As a statement of intent, it worked. As a product, it never existed. Our complete history of MINI concept cars places it among the brand’s boldest ideas, and it is one of the more honest previews MINI has produced.

The 2016 Clubman ALL4 Scrambler: the one nobody at HQ owned

The Scrambler went further in ways that matter for a real car. It had a raised ride height, off-road tyres and rugged design cues that nodded to adventure bikes and soft-roaders, all on the Clubman’s wagon-like platform. We thought it looked even better than the Beachcomber, because the longer roof gave it a stance the smaller car couldn’t match.

The catch is who made it. The Scrambler was created by MINI Italy and was not fully sanctioned by MINI Global. A concept the parent company won’t fully claim is rarely headed for production, and despite obvious public interest, MINI never seemed eager to build it.

The X-Raid road cars: the ones that shipped

While MINI sketched, its rally partner built. The 2020 X-Raid Countryman edition was a factory-sanctioned upgrade package for the F60, with a 40mm suspension lift from upgraded springs and shocks, lightweight 17-inch wheels on serious all-terrain tyres, underbody protection, a roof rack, extra LED lighting and orange-accented livery. It was the closest any customer came to a real off-road MINI, and it still arrived through a tuner.

The U25 follow-up, developed with delta4x4, is more ambitious. A custom rally chassis raises ride height by 50mm and widens the track by 10mm per side to fit 255/55 R18 tyres on delta4x4 Hanma wheels, with widened bodywork, a 76mm bull bar, PIAA auxiliary lighting and a roof rack set up for sand plates, a spare wheel and jerry cans. The aim is a TÜV-certified, street-legal build under German law. It is also a European project, not a MINI one.

What might have been

Put the two halves together and the gap is obvious. The motorsport side gave MINI credibility, the Odyssey gave it proof, and the concepts gave it attitude and stance. X-Raid supplied the hardware. Not one of them carried a factory badge, a warranty and a dealer network. The demand was shown again and again, and MINI never answered the harder question of whether it would put its own name on the engineering.

Where the new car fits

That is why Tuesday matters. MINI’s entry in the Rebelle Rally, the longest competitive off-road navigation rally in the United States, is the first time the brand has attached its name to an off-road car and asked it to survive. The 2026 edition runs October 7 to 17 across Nevada, California and, for the first time, Utah, with GPS banned and a map, compass and road book the only navigation tools. Driver Felicia Killman already races a MINI in American Rally Association events, and navigator Erika Ferrer has three regional co-driver titles in Mexico. As we argued when the entry was announced, the Rebelle debut is a preview of the rugged Countryman.

What MINI has not said is how much of the history survives. There is no word on suspension, ride height, final tyre specification, the name, powertrain or price. Our sources have long pointed to General Grabber AT3 tyres and a modest lift, as we first reported in March 2025, and a prototype testing in the Rocky Mountains showed extra suspension travel and a roof cargo box. But MINI already sells US Adventure packages with all-terrain tyres and no change in ride height, and grip is not engineering. The suspension answer will tell us whether this is the Scrambler finally built, or the Beachcomber’s look with better tyres.

The Beachcomber was 2010. The verdict arrives on Tuesday, and we’ll be there when the covers come off. Everything we’ve covered so far lives in our U25 MINI Countryman hub.

The post MINI Off-Road History: The Rally Wins, the Concepts and the Cars MINI Never Built appeared first on MotoringFile.

What’s in the MINI Lifestyle Collection 2026

The range covers the familiar categories. Apparel for men and women includes T-shirts, caps, polo shirts, hoodies and jackets. Bags and luggage run from crossbody bags and shoppers through roll-top backpacks and laptop bags to duffle bags and trolleys. Accessories include notebooks, water bottles, travel mugs, umbrellas and sunglasses.

For younger enthusiasts, the MINI Baby Racer returns alongside the MINI Alu Balance Bike, with T-shirts and sweatshirts wearing classic Mini graphics. That lowercase “Mini” matters: it’s the heritage badge, and it’s nice to see the original car still doing the heavy lifting for the brand’s youngest fans. Scale models of the MINI Cooper SE and MINI Aceman SE round things out.

Availability starts in October 2026, depending on market. Pricing hasn’t been announced yet.

The colors are the story

Look at where those seasonal shades come from. Ocean Wave Green has been one of the signature colors of the current Cooper and Cooper Convertible palette. Smokey Green belongs to the Countryman. Rebel Red is the Aceman’s answer to Chili Red. Put simply, the collection is a tour of the current MINI family told through fabric.

Peter Zamljak, Head of MINI Lifestyle and Licences, offered the obligatory line about capturing the Zeitgeist, which is the sort of phrase that has appeared in lifestyle press releases since roughly the invention of the lifestyle press release. But to back up his point, his favorite piece is a coffee mug that matches the color of his own Cooper.

That’s the real pitch here, and MINI should lean into it harder. Owners obsess over paint. We’ve spent years cataloguing MINI’s reds, whites and blues precisely because colour is how MINI owners express ownership. A travel mug that matches your car is a small thing, but it’s the kind of small thing that actually sells.

A long, uneven tradition

MINI has been doing this for a long time, with results that have ranged from genuinely clever to forgettable. The high-water mark remains accessories like the MINI Motion Watch, a piece good enough to be on display at MoMA when it launched in 2004. Few brand merchandise programmes can claim that.

Since then the collections have followed MINI’s own design direction. The 2016 to 2018 range introduced the colour block look alongside the brand’s refreshed identity. The 2018 to 2020 collection built itself around Island and Coral. The 2021 collection borrowed the gradient from the Multitone roof and moved T-shirts and sweatshirts to organic cotton made in Portugal. And the 2024 range took its motifs from the front of the new Cooper, even lining its bags with the seat pattern from the car.

Against that history, 2026 looks like an evolution rather than a reinvention. The car-derived palette is a smart continuation of the 2024 thinking. What’s missing from the announcement is detail. Recent collections made a point of materials, sourcing and sustainability credentials; this one talks about “high-quality materials” and “practical compartments” and leaves it there. That may simply be the press release rather than the product, but for a brand that has made a point of this before, the silence is noticeable.

The takeaway

MINI gets the fundamental idea right here. The best merchandise from any car brand connects back to the cars, and matching the collection to the paint on the current Cooper, Countryman and Aceman does exactly that. Whether it lands will come down to the things the announcement didn’t cover: price, material quality and whether the colours on a hoodie actually match the colors on the car.

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What’s Underneath the Countryman You Can Buy Today

The U25 Countryman EV rides on FAAR, the same platform underneath the BMW iX1. FAAR was designed to flex across combustion, plug-in hybrid, and battery-electric powertrains on one architecture, a sensible way to manage cost across a shared BMW/MINI lineup, but a genuine compromise for the EV variant specifically.

The SE ALL4’s dual-motor setup produces 313hp with a 66.5kWh gross (64.7kWh usable) NMC battery, good for a WLTP range around 433km. Front-wheel drive is the base architecture, with a second motor bolted to the rear axle for ALL4 all-wheel drive rather than a true rear-biased layout. Because the underlying structure still has to accommodate a transmission tunnel and mounting points designed for an engine, the battery pack can’t use the floor space as efficiently as a dedicated EV skateboard, which is part of why charging tops out at a relatively modest 128 to 130kW DC on a 400V system. We’ve covered this tradeoff before: FAAR’s flexibility comes directly at the expense of packaging efficiency.

BMW’s Gen6 Platform: Built With No Compromises Baked In

Gen6 is not an update to FAAR’s electrical system, it’s a different starting point altogether. It debuts on the Neue Klasse platform (first seen in the iX3) and moves the entire architecture to 800V, using cylindrical cells rather than the prismatic format in current MINI EVs. The battery pack itself becomes structural, both cell-to-pack and pack-to-open-body, meaning the housing is load-bearing rather than just a component bolted beneath the floor.

The result, per BMW’s own engineering briefings, is a 30 percent gain in both range and charging speed, with some configurations doing better. Drive comes from an electrically excited synchronous motor at the rear axle (no permanent magnets, field strength generated by windings instead) paired with an asynchronous motor up front on all-wheel-drive variants. Everything routes through a new component called the BMW Energy Master, a central control unit that manages high and low voltage power flow and can be updated over the air. The inverter uses silicon carbide semiconductors for efficiency gains that simply weren’t available to the 400V systems FAAR was designed around.

The Real Change Is Philosophical, Not Just Technical

This is where it gets interesting for MINI specifically. As we detailed when the RWD shift first leaked, BMW Group engineers have confirmed there are no plans for a front-wheel-drive version of Gen6. That’s a genuine break from MINI’s identity going back to 1959, when front-wheel drive was the whole point of the original car’s packaging trick. A Neue Klasse based Countryman inherits a rear-wheel-drive-biased chassis by default, with all-wheel drive as the performance option rather than the front-drive-plus-rear-motor arrangement used today.

FAAR’s job was to make one platform serve three powertrain types without asking BMW to engineer three separate cars. Gen6’s job is the opposite: build the best possible EV chassis and let the modularity happen at the software and battery-sizing level instead. BMW has said the Neue Klasse chassis is designed to scale from Countryman-sized footprints up to X7 territory, a very different kind of flexibility than FAAR’s powertrain-agnostic approach.

First, the U25 Gets Its LCI

None of this happens overnight, and the current U25 isn’t just sitting still waiting for its replacement. MINI already pushed a light EV-focused update into March 2026 production, a revised battery pack with a net capacity gain of less than 0.5kWh, essentially the same cell chemistry with most of the improvement coming from software-based energy management rather than new hardware.

The bigger one is still to come. Design chief Holger Hampf has confirmed a full Life Cycle Impulse is in the works for the U25, described as guided directly by customer feedback and, as of this spring, nearly finished. Sourcing on the exact timing has moved around, MotoringFile has previously reported windows ranging from late 2027 to mid-2028, but the shape of it is consistent: exterior design tweaks, an interior refresh, and enough of a reworking to keep the FAAR-based Countryman feeling current while the Neue Klasse successor’s own timeline keeps shifting underneath it. Worth noting, that successor was originally targeted for 2028 before slipping to 2032, so the LCI isn’t just a stopgap, it’s likely to be the U25’s primary identity for a meaningful stretch of its production run.

What This Means for the Next Countryman

MINI has confirmed the next-generation Countryman EV moves to Neue Klasse, and we’ve reported on the shift toward more range and rear-biased dynamics that comes with it. Current sourcing points to a launch around 2032, alongside an extended run for the ICE Countryman on U25. Exact battery capacity and motor outputs for a Countryman-scaled Gen6 application haven’t been confirmed, that’s the kind of detail BMW tends to hold until closer to reveal, so treat any specific number floated online as sourced direction rather than settled fact.

What is confirmed is the shape of the change: MINI’s most important EV is moving from a platform built to accommodate an engine to one that was never asked to. That’s not a spec sheet upgrade, it’s a different design brief entirely, and it’s likely to be the most significant engineering shift in the Countryman’s history.

The post How BMW’s New EV Architecture is Set to Radically Change the Next MINI Countryman EV appeared first on MotoringFile.

The photos come from MINI interior designer Thomas Wu and former head of MINI Design Anders Warming (now Head of Designworks) who posted them to Instagram. What makes this so interesting is that the Superleggera has lived a very secluded life in the BMW archives since it’s debut. In fact the only public appearances were a couple of motor shows and its European debut on the Lake Como lawn.

If you need a refresher: MINI revealed the Superleggera Vision at the 2014 Concorso d’Eleganza at Villa d’Este. It came out of a collaboration between MINI Design in Munich, led by Warming, and the Milanese coachbuilder Touring Superleggera. Touring built it the traditional way, with hand-shaped aluminium panels over a tubular space frame. It was electric long before MINI sold an EV. As we’ve documented, it was also a car that got much closer to production than most people realise. There were serious attempts to build it, including possible platform partnerships with Toyota and Great Wall, but BMW had no suitable small EV platform. 

Concept cars don’t usually get parking spots

MINI rarely lets its concepts out, and almost never onto public roads. When a heritage one-off does appear, it’s usually on a concours lawn or a museum floor, with rope stanchions and a handler whose job is to make sure nobody leans on it.

This was the opposite. Look at the backgrounds of the photos: a row of bicycles, a pharmacy sign, a 30 km/h zone, and strangers bent at the waist to look into the cockpit. That’s not a controlled environment. It’s a Munich street on an autumn evening.

The photos don’t show whether the car arrived under its own power or on a flatbed. In some ways that doesn’t matter. Someone had to approve putting an irreplaceable, hand-built aluminium car within door-ding range of the general public. Car companies don’t make that call casually.

What the street shows that the press photos didn’t

The official 2014 photography was beautiful, but it flattered the car. When we first saw the Superleggera in person, we were struck by dimensionality that the official photos tend to miss. These street shots make the same point. 

In flat natural light, the Como Blue has more grey in it than the studio images suggested, and it looks better for it. Next to the smart, the proportions read clearly: a tidy package with very little overhang. Next to the vintage 911, it looks right at home. The cream leather seats, the twin fairings and the black multi-spoke wheels have aged remarkably well – perhaps better than some more recent MINIs.

Twelve years on, it still looks like a proposal rather than a relic.

It’s also worth staying honest about what it was. It’s a two-seat roadster with no real roof, little practical luggage space and packaging that ignored the realities of crash structures. MINI’s last attempt at a two-seater, the R59 Roadster, didn’t exactly clean up in the showroom. The Superleggera is a sculpture with a drivetrain, and a production version would have needed compromises that the concept never faced.

Why the timing matters

This is analysis, not reporting, but the timing is hard to ignore.

MINI is putting pen to paper on the next-generation Cooper right now. As we reported in June, the current F66 has an LCIs ahead of it and shortly after a full redesign. The first update is targeted at late 2027 or early 2028 will include tweaks to interior and exterior styling. That work is well underway and likely wrapping up as we speak. Beyond that, the fifth-generation Cooper is taking shape. While the petrol Cooper will retain the UKL platform from the F66, the new Cooper EV will likely ride an a short version of BMW’s Gen 6 platform and architecture giving MINI plenty of freedom to rethink it’s design.

Consider what a rear-drive electric architecture allows: a longer bonnet, a cabin set back, and a front end that doesn’t have to wrap around a transverse engine. Those are exactly the proportions the Superleggera needed in 2014 and couldn’t have. The platform that killed the car may finally exist.

None of this means a Superleggera is coming. Design studios pull reference objects for many reasons. Sometimes it really is just a designer with good connections and a sunny afternoon. MINI also has a long habit of loving concepts it never builds; the Superleggera sits at the top of our list of concepts that should have made production for a reason.

Still, the people in these photos aren’t tourists. They’re the designers who will shape what a MINI looks like in the 2030s. They took the brand’s most beloved what-if out of storage and drove it, or at least parked it, in the real world. Sit in it, look at the proportions in daylight, see how strangers react. That’s how designers calibrate.

For the full backstory, see how MINI secretly built a running Superleggera prototype and our original 2014 debut coverage.

The post The MINI Superleggeram Concept Spotted on the Streets of Munich appeared first on MotoringFile.

Driver Felicia Killman and navigator Erika Ferrer have finished field sessions on dunes, rock and loose terrain ahead of 1,500 GPS-free miles across Nevada, California and, new this year, Utah. The rest of us haven’t seen the car yet. MINI is keeping it under wraps until a global reveal days before the rally starts, and MotoringFile will be there when the covers come off.

MINI’s latest release still never uses the word Countryman. It doesn’t need to. As we argued when the entry was announced, MINI’s Rebelle Rally debut is really a preview of the rugged Countryman, and this is that car’s first public exam.

Training for a rally that bans GPS

The Rebelle is not a flat-out race. It’s a navigation rally, and once the start flag drops, map and compass are the only tools allowed. That makes the right seat at least as important as the left, and Ferrer’s comments are the most honest thing in MINI’s release. She admits the car is impressive, then says the training that actually kept her awake was navigation: reading terrain, knowing when to slow down and recheck a bearing, and “trusting the compass over instinct when they disagree.”

That’s the real rally. A capable car gets you to the wrong checkpoint just as quickly as the right one.

Ferrer brings genuine rally credentials, with three consecutive regional co-driver titles in Mexico and time alongside Benito Guerra at La Carrera Panamericana. Killman already races a MINI in American Rally Association events, so neither is a marketing passenger. Killman described first seeing the finished car as an “oh boy, we’re actually doing this” moment, which is about as candid as a manufacturer press release gets.

The build will go further than the production version

The car was prepared by three BMW Group engineers, James Wallace, Dennis Heaphy and Eran Garma, who took it on alongside their regular jobs. Wallace’s framing is the right one: every bracket, mount and panel was considered for what happens forty miles from pavement, and solved by testing, adjusting and testing again.

The sponsor list fills in the hardware. DealerTire supplied a full set of all-terrain tyres plus spares. Heinlein Racing Development, a New Jersey shop with IMSA and World Challenge roots, engineered the skid plate and interior mounting systems. Morimoto added roof and grille-mounted lighting, Thule handles roof cargo, and Pelican, Peak Design and GoPro cover the gear and cameras. MINI Motoring Protection is funding travel, shipping and media support.

Read that list carefully and it splits in two. Lights, cases and cameras are rally kit. All-terrain rubber, underbody protection and cargo mounting are exactly the areas where we expect the production car to change under the skin. Our sources have long pointed to General Grabber AT3 tyres and a modest lift, which is also the recipe MINI laid out in its long history of off-road concepts that never reached showrooms.

The problem is what the release leaves out. There’s not a word about suspension. That’s the part that decides whether this is a genuinely more capable Countryman or a well-dressed one. MINI already sells port-installed Adventure packages with all-terrain tyres and no ride height change. Grip is not engineering. Whether MINI has gone further, whether with a proper passive lift or the air suspension we’ve speculated about, is still the most important unanswered question.

Why the Rebelle, and why now

MINI didn’t pick this event at random. This is BMW Group’s sixth straight year at the Rebelle, and the 2023 X2 M35i run is the template: world premiere, then straight into the desert days later. The X5 followed in 2025 and came home with the Bone Stock Award and a second-place X-Cross finish. MINI is running the same play with its own car.

It’s easy to dismiss this as marketing, but that misses the point. MINI’s off-road credibility is real, from X-Raid’s five Dakar wins between 2012 and 2020 to X-Raid’s own lifted U25 Countryman build. What’s changed is that MINI USA now seems to want dirt under its own badge, following a year in which it committed to a full ARA rally season with the Cooper and Countryman. The Dakar cars shared little more than a silhouette with anything you could buy. The Rebelle car is the opposite: a near-production vehicle asked to survive 1,500 miles with the showroom version days away.

There’s a tension here, too. MINI’s own Icelandic road trip in the Countryman SE showed what the car can do with the right tyres and kit. A rally finish would prove durability. Neither answers whether buyers will get meaningful hardware or mostly a look. October will.

What happens in October

The 2026 Rebelle runs October 7 to 17, beginning with technical inspection in Las Vegas and a ceremonial start at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, before the teams head into the desert and on to Utah. The production reveal lands just ahead of it.

We’ll be on the ground for the debut. Expect first-hand photos, video and the answers the release carefully dodges: suspension specifics, ride height, final tyre spec, the official name, and what it will cost over a standard Countryman S ALL4. For everything we’ve covered so far, our U25 MINI Countryman hub is the place to start.

MINI has been sketching this car since the Beachcomber concept in 2010. In a few weeks, it stops being a sketch.

The post MINI’s Off-Road Countryman Nears Its Debut * Preps for the Rebelle Rally appeared first on MotoringFile.

In Chinese, MINI groups the two editions under a single name: ????, or Cool Britannia. If the MINI Cooper Oxford Edition was MINI’s 25th anniversary letter to Plant Oxford, this is China’s reply in the same language, only louder.

Why Cool Britannia, and why it fits

Cool Britannia was the 1990s cultural moment when British music, art, film and fashion took the Union Jack back from the souvenir shops and made it fashionable again. It is also, not coincidentally, the decade in which BMW bought Rover Group and with it the Mini. The modern brand was conceived in exactly the cultural moment this edition references, so the name is less of a stretch than most special edition branding.

MINI China’s press materials never mention the Oxford Edition. Our reading, and this is analysis rather than anything MINI has said, is that the Cool Britannia range does the job the Oxford Edition does in Europe (and the job the Heritage Edition does in North America), just built for a market that prefers its specials fully loaded.

The Union Jack Edition: three cars, 74 lines

The headline car is based on the J01 electric MINI Cooper, and the paint process is the real story. MINI says the Union Jack isn’t symmetrical: the broad white stripe sits above the red on one diagonal and below it on the other. That makes it harder to wrap around a curved body than a simple mirrored graphic. The engineering team spent three months modelling and ran more than 100 trials before arriving at 74 separation lines where red, white and blue meet.

The finish takes three paint layers and nine stages. Each colour is applied and cured in turn, with two rounds of hand masking and two rounds of pattern calibration in between. Craftsmen with 20 years’ experience then hand-finish all 74 lines to even out paint thickness before a final clear coat goes on.

This is a genuine factory paint job, not a wrap, and at RMB 298,888 it costs roughly RMB 90,000 more than the standard Best of British car. For bespoke multi-colour paint, that’s close to reasonable. It’s also a three-unit run, which tells you what it really is: a halo, a press photo and a showroom centrepiece. Nobody is meant to cross-shop it.

The Best of British Edition: the one people will buy

The volume car takes the flag and breaks it into parts. A Union Jack stripe runs down the bonnet and continues to the rear, finishing as a full-width visor graphic across the roof spoiler. Every model except the Cabrio gets a white roof. There are Union Jack valve caps, red, white and blue door sills, and a rear badge that pairs the Union Jack with a chequered flag, the same British-origins-plus-racing idea the Oxford Edition uses on its floor mats.

The most interesting detail is the smallest. The floating hub caps keep the MINI logo upright while the wheel turns, and MINI says no other current model range offers them. Anyone who has seen a Rolls-Royce roll by will recognise the idea, and borrowing a trick from Goodwood is no bad thing.

The Cabrio gets the obvious flourish: a Union Jack soft top that folds away when you’d rather not wear it.

Colours depend on the model. The electric car comes only in Chili Red and Blazing Blue. The 3-Door and 5-Door add Ocean Wave Green, British Racing Green, Nanuq White and Legend Grey. The Cabrio adds an exclusive Sparkling Copper Grey on top of that.

Where it departs from the Oxford Edition

The Oxford Edition is a design package on the 3-door car only, offered as either a Cooper C or a Cooper S. China has made three different choices.

First, performance. Every combustion Best of British car uses the 150 kW version of the B48, which is Cooper S output, and the electric car uses the 160 kW motor. There’s no entry-level version.

Second, equipment. The spec sheet reads like the options list with everything ticked: Harman Kardon audio, a panoramic roof, 10-way power seats with memory and a massaging lumbar, heated wheel and seats, Driving Assistant Plus and Parking Assistant Plus. The combustion cars add a head-up display and AR navigation, plus JCW front sport seats in beige Vescin. The electric car uses grey and blue Vescin and cloth.

Third, coverage. The Oxford Edition stayed with the Hardtop. China brings in the 5-Door and the Cabrio, and the Cabrio is the only one that can actually fly the flag with its roof.

The part worth noticing

There’s a real irony here. The most thoroughly British MINI of the year, the one wearing the complete flag in 74 hand-finished lines, is the J01 electric Cooper, which is built in China by the Spotlight joint venture with Great Wall Motor. The Oxford Edition celebrates the factory. The Union Jack Edition celebrates the idea of Britain, on a car built 5,000 miles from it. That isn’t a criticism. It’s a fair reflection of what MINI’s Britishness has become: an identity carried by the design, not by the postcode. With the next electric Cooper now expected to move production out of China, this edition may end up marking the peak of that arrangement.

Two things are missing. The Aceman, a China-built model aimed squarely at this market, isn’t part of the range. And there’s no mechanical change anywhere, which is normal for modern MINI specials, as our F56 special editions guide sets out. The Cabrio’s RMB 320,800 price also asks a lot of a fabric roof, however patriotic its pattern.

The MF Takeaway

Together, the Union Jack Edition and the Best of British Edition show MINI’s regional special edition strategy maturing. It’s the same thinking behind Icon Drops and the Paul Smith Edition: give the buyer a story rather than a paint code. The three-car Union Jack Edition is theatre, and very good theatre. The Best of British cars are the substance: well equipped, Cooper S-quick and more coherent than most flag-themed specials have been. China didn’t get the Oxford Edition. It got something more ambitious, and in some ways more interesting.

This is one regional edition among what are likely several around the world. For the rest, our special editions section stays current as MINI releases each one.

The post MINI Cooper Union Jack Edition: China Paints the Entire Flag On appeared first on MotoringFile.

MINI USA’s Value Play

“The Oxford Edition has always represented one of the best values in the MINI lineup,” said Vikash Joshi, Product Manager, MINI USA. “For 2027, we’re excited to bring these models back in both the 2 Door and 4 Door for drivers who want iconic MINI design, premium appointments, and engaging performance at an accessible price point.”

That value pitch is the whole point. The Oxford Edition is built on the MINI Cooper C 2 Door and MINI Cooper C 4 Door, so it carries all the standard equipment those models already offer, then layers on design touches and premium features without moving the price up.

The Trade-Offs: What the Discount Doesn’t Buy You

$4,000 off is real money, but the Oxford Edition isn’t a free lunch, it’s a curated one, and curation cuts both ways. The most obvious trade-off is power: the Oxford Edition is built exclusively on the Cooper C, MINI’s base 161-horsepower tune. There’s no Oxford Edition Cooper S and no Oxford Edition JCW. Want the 201-horsepower S or the 228-horsepower JCW, you’re paying full Cooper S or JCW money and getting none of the Oxford Edition’s paint, wheels, or seats in return.

The second trade-off is choice itself. A standard Cooper C buyer picks from MINI’s full color palette, three trim tiers (Signature, Signature Plus, Iconic), and a growing list of à la carte options, Piano Black exterior trim, alternate upholstery combinations, Favoured or JCW Style packages. The Oxford Edition buyer picks none of that. It’s one fixed spec: three colors, one wheel design, one seat and interior combination, full stop. That’s precisely how MINI keeps the price down, but it also means the Oxford Edition can’t become the car you’d actually configure if money weren’t a factor, it’s the car MINI configured for you.

That fixed spec also means the Oxford Edition never touches Signature Plus or Iconic trim. Because the Oxford Edition isn’t sold as a trim level you can upgrade from, there’s no official path to add any additional options after the fact. Worth confirming with a dealer before ordering if any of those matter to you.

MINI Oxford Edition – The Spec

The 2027 Oxford Edition gets its own paint palette, each paired with a black contrast roof:

• Sunny Side Yellow
• Blazing Blue Metallic
• Nanuq White Metallic

That paint-and-roof combination alone is a $650 value included at no additional cost. MINI is also fitting the Oxford Edition with distinctive 18-inch Slide Spoke 2-Tone wheels wrapped in summer tires (a $750 value) which sharpen the car’s stance and give it a noticeably more athletic look than the standard Cooper.

Interior: Sport Seats and a Blacked-Out Cabin

Inside, the Oxford Edition swaps in supportive Sport Seats trimmed in a Grey/Blue Vescin and cloth combination, set off by an Anthracite Headliner. Black roof and mirror caps carry the exterior’s contrast theme through to the details, reinforcing the unmistakable MINI look the Oxford Edition is known for.

2027 MINI Cooper Oxford Edition Pricing Compared to the Range

At those numbers, the Oxford Edition undercuts what it would cost to add equivalent wheels and paint options a la carte — which is exactly the value proposition MINI is leaning on.

The Value Math, Then and Now

MINI USA’s “best deal in the lineup” claim is easy to say and, refreshingly, easy to check. Strip destination and handling out of both sides of the ledger and the 2027 Oxford Edition undercuts its own Cooper C sibling by exactly $4,000: $25,500 against a $29,500 2 Door, $26,500 against a $30,500 4 Door. That works out to roughly 13 to 14 percent off, for a car built on identical Cooper C mechanicals, just wearing better paint and sitting on better wheels.

Part of a Growing Oxford Edition Family

The 2027 MINI Cooper Oxford Edition doesn’t arrive alone. It joins the 2027 MINI Countryman S ALL4 Oxford Edition, meaning the Oxford treatment now spans MINI’s smallest hatch and its largest crossover for Model Year 2027.

All 2027 MINI Cooper Oxford Edition models, 2 Door and 4 Door, are available to order now through authorized MINI dealers nationwide.

The post MINI Cooper Oxford Edition: The Value Is Real. So Is the Compromise. appeared first on MotoringFile.

The F56 Cooper SE proved there was genuine appetite for a small electric hatchback in this market, selling steadily in the US until production ended in late 2023. What followed was silence. The J01 Cooper, the current generation electric MINI built in China, never made economic sense for North America once punishing tariffs on Chinese-built vehicles made the numbers impossible. The result is a gap that MINI’s most committed fans feel every time they walk into a dealer and find no electric Cooper waiting for them.

Now comes the BMW NB0 i1, a rear-wheel drive electric hatchback on BMW’s Gen6 Neue Klasse platform, reportedly being evaluated for at least one North American variant. That’s significant on its own terms. But for fans of the MINI brand the more important question isn’t whether the i1 comes here. It’s what the i1’s existence, its platform, and its production location reveal about what MINI is building next and where it might be available.

What The Platform Unlocks

The i1 will sit on BMW’s Gen6 Neue Klasse architecture, a ground-up electric platform with 800-volt charging, cylindrical battery cells promising around 30% more range than the current generation, and rear-wheel drive as standard. These are not incremental improvements. They represent a fundamental step change in what a compact electric car can deliver in terms of range, charging speed, and driving dynamics.

This platform is also the foundation on which MINI’s next generation electric products will be built. We’ve tracked this story closely since we first broke the news of the NE5 Countryman moving to Neue Klasse, and followed it through the iX3’s launch as the first Neue Klasse SUV and what that means for MINI’s future. The i1 adds another layer to that picture. It will be the smallest Neue Klasse product yet, and what we know about its architecture tells us a great deal about how the platform scales down to the compact end of the range where MINI lives most naturally.

Leipzig: Where It All Connects

BMW’s Leipzig plant is currently being prepared for Neue Klasse production, a retooling that signals the platform’s rollout is moving into its next phase. For MINI readers that detail matters enormously. Leipzig is the plant that currently builds the MINI Countryman and Countryman Electric alongside BMW’s compact models, and it is the same facility our sources have indicated as the likely production location for both the next generation MINI Countryman EV and the next generation MINI Cooper EV. Whatever Neue Klasse infrastructure BMW is building out in Leipzig, MINI will almost certainly share it. BMW Group doesn’t retool a plant for a single model. Leipzig going Neue Klasse means Leipzig going Neue Klasse for the entire compact family built there.

The i1 as Sister Car

Here is where the story becomes most interesting for this audience. BMW Group has a long and consistent history of building platform twins across its brands: the current U25 Countryman and BMW X1 share UKL2, the J01 Cooper and its Great Wall sibling share their dedicated electric architecture, and the pattern extends across almost every model in the portfolio. Neue Klasse will be no different.

The NE5 Countryman, now confirmed for a 2032 launch after being pushed back from 2028, will almost certainly be a direct sister car to whatever Neue Klasse crossover BMW builds at the same size, with the i1 serving the same role at the smaller hatchback end of the range. The relationship between the i1 and the next MINI Cooper EV is likely to be exactly that: same platform, same production facility, same core engineering, different proportions, different character, different badge. Shorten the wheelbase slightly, apply MINI’s specific proportions, and the bones of the i1 become a plausible foundation for the most authentically MINI electric Cooper the brand has ever produced.

There is also a reasonable case that the platform could underpin a smaller MINI crossover sitting below the Countryman, filling the space the Aceman currently occupies with something built on a more advanced and capable architecture. BMW Group has shown a consistent appetite for extracting multiple body styles from a single platform investment, and Neue Klasse’s modular design is specifically engineered to accommodate that kind of flexibility.

What It Would Mean

A next generation MINI Cooper EV on Neue Klasse Gen6 architecture would be a different proposition from anything the brand has offered before. Rear-wheel drive as standard, which would be a first for a production MINI Cooper. 800-volt fast charging bringing replenishment speeds that make range anxiety genuinely obsolete. A 30% improvement in range over current generation batteries in a body size that could achieve real-world figures north of 300 miles. And dynamics shaped by a platform engineered around driving engagement from the ground up, rather than adapted from a front-wheel drive combustion architecture.

It would also, if built in Leipzig, solve the North American availability problem that has left US buyers without an electric Cooper since 2023. A German-built MINI Cooper EV carries none of the tariff complications that made the J01 impossible to sell here, and it would return a proper electric Cooper to US dealers with technology that makes the F56 Cooper SE’s 114-mile range look like a different era entirely, which of course it was.

A Few Things Still to Be Confirmed

None of this is confirmed. The i1’s North American availability is a credible rumour, not an announcement. The next generation MINI Cooper EV’s platform, production location, and timeline remain unconfirmed beyond what we’ve reported on the broader Neue Klasse roadmap. And the specific question of whether MINI builds a direct i1 twin or develops something distinct for the next Cooper EV has no definitive answer yet.

What is clear is that the pieces are assembling in a direction that makes a compelling next generation MINI electric car not just possible but increasingly logical. The platform exists. The plant is being prepared. The North American market has already demonstrated it wants exactly this kind of car. And BMW Group has a consistent track record of building platform families that serve multiple brands simultaneously.

The i1 may wear a roundel when it arrives. What comes next from Leipzig might wear wings.

The post BMW Is Planning a Electric Hatchback for North America and It May Preview the Next MINI Cooper EV appeared first on MotoringFile.

What’s on the Stages

The Overmountain Rally covers 100 competition miles and 160 transit miles across terrain that shifts from smooth gravel to rough, clay-slick sections and brief tarmac with steep elevation changes and tight hairpins. The centrepiece is the Newport Speedway, a high-banked oval that doubles as the event’s paddock and hosts a stadium-style Super Special stage run under lights on mixed surfaces, the kind of spectator-friendly setup that rally desperately needs more of in the US.

LAP Motorsports, MINI’s long-standing partner and the operation running the two-car program under the John Cooper Works Race Team banner, is fielding the same pairing it’s run all season: a John Cooper Works Countryman ALL4 in the Limited 4 Wheel Drive class and a John Cooper Works 2-Door in Open 2 Wheel Drive. For Tennessee, David and Drew Quillen are back in the 2-Door, while Luis Perocarpi returns to the Countryman alongside Mark Wells, the same driver he ran with at Sno*Drift in February. Felicia Killman, who co-drove the Countryman at Rally Colorado in July, isn’t on the Overmountain entry list. It’s a small detail, but the kind that matters over a season built on consistency rather than one-off results.

A Rookie Season That’s Actually Delivered

MINI announced this full-season ARA push back in February with the sort of confident framing manufacturers use before they’ve proven anything. Seven rounds later, the results back it up: a class podium at the season-opening Sno*Drift Rally in the snow of northern Michigan, and another at Rally Colorado in July, all in cars that stay close to factory specification under ARA’s minimal-modification rules.

That last point is worth dwelling on. Unlike a purpose-built rally car wearing MINI badges as a formality, what’s turning laps at Newport this weekend is recognisably the car you’d find at a dealer, plus safety equipment. When Perocarpi says the John Cooper Works 2-Door and Countryman ALL4 have “proven their performance, durability, and competitiveness,” it’s not empty sponsor-speak, it’s backed by a season of podiums earned in cars that haven’t been reinvented for the job.

The pairing of the two models also tells its own story about what MINI thinks rally needs to look like in 2026. The 2-Door is the answer enthusiasts expect: short wheelbase, low weight, the go-kart handling MINI has traded on since the Cooper S. The Countryman ALL4 is the pragmatic counterpoint, a compact SUV with all-wheel-drive grip built for a discipline that increasingly rewards traction over lightness. Running both simultaneously lets MINI hedge its bets on which philosophy resonates, and so far, both have delivered.

The Dealer Pit Crew Program Deserves More Attention Than It Gets

One piece of this program that hasn’t gotten much ink: four technicians from the MINI dealer network are selected for each race to work the pits alongside the LAP crew. It’s a smart, low-cost way to connect the retail side of the business to the racing effort, and it beats the usual marketing exercise of flying dealer staff to a track day. Technicians who’ve actually turned wrenches on a rally car under time pressure are technicians who understand the cars differently. Whether that translates into anything measurable for MINI USA’s service departments is unclear, but it’s the kind of program that costs little and builds real goodwill within the dealer body.

The Rally DNA Argument, Tested Again

MINI’s marketing leans hard on the Monte Carlo Rally wins of 1964, 1965, and 1967 whenever motorsport comes up, and it’s a fair reference point: the classic Mini Cooper S, built by John Cooper out of Alec Issigonis’s space-efficient city car, genuinely did outrun far more powerful cars on tight, icy mountain roads. The question worth asking is whether a modern factory-backed ARA campaign actually connects to that heritage or just borrows its imagery. Seven rounds in, with two podiums and consistent finishes in cars that stay close to showroom spec, the connection feels earned rather than invoked. The Countryman ALL4 obviously isn’t chasing the original’s “giant killer” story the same way the 2-Door is, but MINI’s continued willingness to run both suggests the brand understands that its rally identity was always about handling and durability, not any one body style.

What’s Left on the Calendar

After Overmountain, the season has one round remaining: the Lake Superior Performance Rally, October 9-10 in Marquette, Michigan, which closes out MINI’s debut ARA campaign. Two podiums with two rounds still to run is a solid rookie-year return, and if either car finds the top step of the podium outright in Tennessee or Michigan, it would be the strongest validation yet that this program is more than a one-season marketing exercise.

The post MINI’s JCW Rally Team Rolls Into Tennessee for the Overmountain Rally appeared first on MotoringFile.

What we don’t know yet where the next Cooper EV production will go. Based on sources we understand that both Oxford England (current home of the petrol Cooper) and Leipzig Germany (the current home of the Countryman) are the leading candidates. However, from what we’re hearing, there’s a clear front-runner.

All roads point to Leipzig

BMW has centralized its small EV production at Leipzig for a while now, and that pattern is exactly why it’s the name coming up as the likely destination for the next Cooper EV. What we’ve heard about the car’s likely move to BMW’s Gen6 platform, the same architecture underpinning the iX3, the upcoming i3 saloon, and the next Countryman, only reinforces it. Leipzig already builds the current Countryman on FAAR alongside the X1 and X2. If the next Cooper shares Gen6 with the Countryman, Leipzig is where BMW’s own playbook says it goes.

That’s a strong signal, not a confirmed decision. We want to be precise about the difference: China being out for main production is the more solid part of this. Leipzig as the destination is our own read on the pattern, informed by sourcing, but it’s not something we’re stating as settled, and neither is Oxford’s exclusion.

Why this still matters even before the decision lands

We’ve asked this exact question before: where does BMW actually build the next Cooper EV, given that the current J01 has been made in China through the Great Wall Motor joint venture since launch, and Oxford’s own electric Cooper plans were paused once already over UK-EU tariff exposure. A China exit for global production, even a partial one, is the clearest signal yet that BMW is done building its most important MINI outside a market it can control the tariff exposure on.

Seen next to Volkswagen’s ongoing crisis, which we argued was largely a story about tariff exposure, Chinese competition and cost structure catching up all at once, this reads as BMW making exactly the kind of move VW didn’t make early enough. Moving Cooper EV production out of China, whatever plant it lands at, is a hedge against those same pressures rather than a reaction to them after the fact.

Where this leaves things

BMW is expected to settle this in the coming weeks. Until it does, here’s where we’d draw the confidence lines: China being out for main production is the part we trust most. Leipzig is the strong favourite based on how BMW has built its small EV lineup so far. Oxford being fully out isn’t something we’re prepared to say yet. We’ll update this the moment BMW makes it official.

The post Next MINI Cooper EV Won’t Be Built in China With Final Decision Coming in October appeared first on MotoringFile.

This is the comparison that helps you get it right. Real specs, real size differences, honest driving impressions, and a clear answer for different types of buyers.

Size: The Gap Is Bigger Than You Think

This is where the comparison starts because it’s where the decision is most often made, and the numbers are more dramatic than most buyers realise before they see the two cars in the same car park.

The F65 Cooper Five-Door measures 161.5 inches in length, 70.2 inches wide, and 56.6 inches tall. It is, in every meaningful sense, a small car. Compact enough for tight urban parking, narrow enough for single-track country roads, and low enough that it still reads as a hatchback rather than a crossover from any angle.

The U25 Countryman is a fundamentally different proposition. It grew nearly eight inches over its predecessor the F60, mostly behind the rear wheels, following the BMW X1’s template more closely than any previous Countryman. The result is a car that competes directly in the small crossover segment against the Volkswagen Tiguan, the Mazda CX-5, and the BMW X1 itself. It is not a large car by crossover standards, but next to the Five-Door it is unambiguously a different size class.

The practical implications of that gap are significant. Rear legroom in the Countryman is genuinely comfortable for adults on longer journeys in a way the Five-Door can’t quite match. Boot space in the Countryman is considerably larger, and the higher seating position adds an ease of entry and exit that matters more than it sounds over the course of daily use. If you regularly carry adults in the back seat, or travel with more than an overnight bag, the Five-Door will ask you to compromise in ways the Countryman won’t.

The flip side is that the Countryman’s size costs you in urban environments. Parking a U25 in a tight city space requires more attention and more maneuvers than the F65. The Five-Door slots into gaps the Countryman has to think about. For buyers in dense metro markets, that difference is felt every single day.

Specs: Two Very Different Powertrains

Both cars share the same B48 four-cylinder engine family in their respective S variants, but the way those engines are deployed tells you a lot about how differently MINI has tuned these cars.

The F65 Cooper S produces 204 horsepower and 221 lb-ft of torque, channelled through a 7-speed dual-clutch transmission to the front wheels. It is a front-wheel drive car, full stop, which is both a philosophical statement and a practical one. The F65 Cooper C, the entry variant, produces 161 hp in markets with four cylinder and 154 with the three cylinder.

The Countryman S ALL4 also uses the B48 but adds all-wheel drive as standard, reflecting both the car’s crossover positioning and the expectation that its buyers are more likely to encounter genuinely varied road surfaces. The Countryman JCW ALL4 goes further still, producing 315 horsepower and all-wheel drive, making it the most powerful production MINI ever built. The JCW’s performance numbers are impressive but still down slightly on the JCW Clubman from the previous generation.

It is worth noting that the Countryman C (where available) uses a 155 horsepower three-cylinder coupled with a 19 horsepower electric motor producing a combined 167 horsepower, a mild hybrid system that the base Five-Door does not share. For buyers focused on efficiency at the entry level, that distinction might matter.

Price: The Gap Widens Quickly

The F65 Cooper Five-Door starts around $30,000 for the Cooper C, with the Cooper S coming in around $34,000 before options. Properly specified with the packages worth having, a well-equipped Five-Door Cooper S lands in the mid-to-high thirties.

The Countryman S ALL4 starts at $38,900, and the JCW ALL4 opens at $46,900. A fully loaded Countryman in JCW trim with meaningful options can push north of $55,000, which is territory that puts it in direct competition with entry-level BMW X1 and X3 territory, a fact that is either entirely appropriate given the platform it shares with the X1 or mildly alarming depending on how you feel about where the MINI brand has positioned itself.

The price gap between a well-specified Five-Door and a well-specified Countryman S is roughly $8,000 to $10,000 at equivalent trim levels. That is a meaningful number, and for buyers who don’t genuinely need the Countryman’s extra space and all-wheel drive capability, it represents real money spent on attributes they may rarely use.

Driving Experience: Where the Cars Diverge Most

This is the most important part of the comparison for any reader of MotoringFile, and it’s where the two cars tell very different stories.

The F65 Five-Door is, at its core, still a MINI in the way that word has meant something since 2001. The chassis communicates. The steering has enough weight and feedback to make corner entry genuinely satisfying. The go-kart feeling that has defined the brand’s identity is present in the Five-Door in a way that is diluted but not destroyed by the extra length and two additional doors. Our review of the Cooper S Five-Door found that it preserved MINI’s playful dynamics while finally delivering the everyday usability many buyers were looking for. That’s a harder balance to achieve than it sounds.

The Countryman is a different exercise entirely. It is a well-engineered small crossover that happens to have MINI’s design language and some of MINI’s character, rather than a MINI that happens to be large. Engineers have done an excellent job hiding the extra size and mass present in the U25, and the JCW version in particular is genuinely fast and capable in ways that surprise. But the fundamental physics of a 3,825 pound all-wheel drive crossover on a platform shared with the BMW X1 mean that the Countryman asks different things of its driver than the Five-Door does. It rewards smoothness and confidence rather than the sharp, immediate inputs the Five-Door responds to so well.

That is not a criticism. It is a description. The Countryman is a very good car. But if what you want is the most MINI-like MINI that still has a usable back seat and a practical boot, the Five-Door is the answer and the Countryman is a different product category wearing the same badge.

Who Should Buy Which

Buy the F65 Cooper Five-Door if: You live in a city or dense suburb where parking is a daily consideration. You want the most driver-focused MINI available in a practical package. Your rear passengers are occasional rather than regular. Your budget is closer to $35,000 than $45,000. You value the go-kart feeling above everything else and are willing to accept a smaller boot to keep it.

Buy the U25 Countryman if: You regularly carry adults in the back seat on journeys longer than twenty minutes. You want or need all-wheel drive for your climate or terrain. You travel frequently with luggage, sports equipment, or anything that requires genuine boot space. Your budget comfortably reaches $40,000 or above. And you don’t mind giving up a little of that go-kart feel for this extra flexibility.

The middle ground: For buyers genuinely torn between the two, spend a day driving both back to back rather than on separate visits. The difference in character is immediately apparent behind the wheel in a way that no comparison article can fully convey. The Five-Door will surprise you with how much it feels like a proper MINI despite its extra size. The Countryman will surprise you with how accomplished and refined it is as a crossover. Which surprise you enjoy more is probably your answer.

The third option: The Used Clubman Alternative

There is a third option worth mentioning for buyers who find themselves caught between the Five-Door and the Countryman on price or practicality: the outgoing F54 Clubman, which ended production in 2024 and is now appearing on the used market in increasing numbers at compelling prices. The Clubman was never a perfect car, but it occupied exactly the space between these two models that no current MINI fills. Longer than the Five-Door with proper rear-hinged barn doors, a genuinely usable boot, and available ALL4 all-wheel drive, it offered much of what the Countryman delivers in a lower, more hatchback-like package that preserved more of the Cooper’s driving character. We covered it extensively throughout its production run and remain convinced it was one of the most underappreciated MINIs of the modern era. A well-specced F54 Clubman S ALL4 with low miles can now be found in the $25,000 to $32,000 range, which undercuts both the Five-Door and the Countryman while delivering a driving experience that sits comfortably between them. For buyers who aren’t locked into new, it deserves a serious look.

For deeper dives on each car individually, our F65 Five-Door coverage and complete U25 Countryman buyer’s guide cover everything you need to know before making the final call.

The post MINI Cooper 5-Door vs Countryman: The Smart Buy for Those Who Need More MINI appeared first on MotoringFile.

None of that is what makes this car interesting to MINI fans however. What does is how BMW managed to create a new car from an existing one. Something MINI will be doing (once again) for its next generation of ICE models.

A CLAR body with and (almost) Neue Klasse brain

The G50, as BimmerFile has previously reported, remains a CLAR platform car at its core, heavily reworked rather than replaced. The Miramas briefing confirms just how heavily. BMW says both the 320 and M350 share a version of the Heart of Joy, its central driving dynamics software, adapted from the electric Neue Klasse architecture for combustion and plug-in hybrid powertrains. That software runs on hardware BMW describes as identical in housing to the EV version, with a different processor built specifically for combustion powertrains, and it is fed by a new sensor cluster BMW calls the 6D Motion Observer, which measures lateral, vertical, and longitudinal acceleration alongside roll, pitch, and yaw to give the software a continuous read on grip independent of driver input.

Put plainly: the body and platform are evolved CLAR. The nervous system is Neue Klasse. That is the Frankenstein car this brief was built to describe, and BMW is not hiding it. It is presenting the transplant as the point.

The reason is one BMW spelled out clearly. Electric motors can respond to driver input in milliseconds, which is what let Heart of Joy work in the first place on cars like the iX3. A combustion engine cannot do that, torque delivery takes hundreds of milliseconds to build, so in the 320 and M350 the same central computer instead coordinates brake intervention, stability and traction control, the electronically controlled rear differential, and steering through one software stack with no communication delay between separate control units. It is a workaround for physics BMW cannot change, wrapped around a body-in-white the company was not ready to replace outright.

Why this matters for the next petrol Cooper

MINI is sitting on the same structural problem, on a smaller platform, with less time to solve it.

We have tracked the UKL platform’s ageing timeline closely this year. By the time the F66 Cooper reaches the end of its planned production run in mid 2032, UKL will have been in continuous use for nearly two decades, the oldest platform BMW Group has ever kept in production for a public facing model. Design chief Holger Hampf has confirmed the next generation Cooper is officially in development for the early 2030s, but the platform underneath it remains genuinely open. Neue Klasse is reserved for the next Countryman and is not a candidate for the petrol Cooper. BMW has also been explicit that combustion is not going away, which leaves the next ICE Cooper needing a genuine foundation without the budget or the timeline for a from-scratch architecture.

The G50 shows what that foundation could plausibly look like. Not a new platform in the traditional sense, but a heavily revised existing one, paired with a software layer borrowed wholesale from the EV side of the business rather than developed in isolation for combustion cars. BMW has now done this twice, first with Heart of Joy’s rollout across Neue Klasse, and now by porting it back onto a combustion platform. That is a repeatable playbook, and MINI has never been shy about inheriting BMW’s engineering after the larger cars prove it out first. UKL itself started life as a BMW board decision that had nothing to do with MINI.

To be clear, this is analysis, not a confirmed roadmap. Nobody at MINI has said Heart of Joy is heading to the next Cooper, and the timelines do not line up neatly, the G50 arrives years before any UKL successor would. But the strategic logic is hard to ignore. If BMW can put a electric-derived dynamics brain into a reworked CLAR body for the 3 Series rather than waiting for a ground-up platform, the same logic applies with even more force to a smaller, lower margin car like the Cooper, where a bespoke combustion architecture was always going to be a hard sell internally.

The same question likely applies to the ICE Countryman once the current U25 reaches the end of its run. Its EV successor is Neue Klasse bound, but the petrol version will need somewhere to live too, and a G50 style hybrid approach, revised chassis plus borrowed software, is a more realistic outcome than a dedicated new combustion platform built for a niche.

BMW spent this briefing explaining how it solved a physics problem for the 3 Series. The more interesting question is how far down the range that solution travels.

The post The Next MINI Cooper Platform: What BMW’s New 3 Series Reveals appeared first on MotoringFile.

Start with the number. The 1998 GT is built around the F66 Cooper C’s turbocharged 1,998cc engine paired to a 7-speed dual-clutch transmission, with JCW styling, brakes and steering wheel and potentially paddle shifters layered on top (that last part were still confirming). While it’s the same B48 2.0 offered in the Cooper S, like all Cooper Cs it’s been detuned to deliver 161 horsepower and 184 lb-ft of torque.

This details (which we flagged in our original exclusive on this car), is why the MINI’s GT naming convention (the 1969 1275 GT, the 2020 1499 GT, both named for their engine displacement) all but guaranteed a third GT built around this exact figure. But make no mistake, this Cooper C still makes due with the lower power output from the standard car.

Where we hedged was the name itself. We guessed MINI would round 1,998cc up to “2000 GT” for simplicity, the way a spec sheet might. Instead MINI kept the number precise: 1998 GT. It’s a small thing, but it’s the right choice, and it lines up with how literal the badge has been on both previous cars. Good on MINI for not taking the easy rounding option.

What you actually get

The 1998 GT Edition is a 2 Door, finished exclusively in Midnight Black Metallic on 17-inch JCW Sprint Spoke Black wheels, with JCW front, side and rear winglets doing the aerodynamic talking. Inside, JCW Sport seats in black Vescin with black knit inserts sit behind a heated three-spoke JCW steering wheel with 1998 GT badging, joined by GT-specific floor mats, door sills, key fob covers and aim the center box.

Pricing starts at $36,875, which puts it meaningfully above a standard Cooper C 2 Door and squarely into Cooper S territory. That’s consistent with how MINI has run this entire campaign: dress a Cooper C or S variant in JCW styling, badge it as something singular, and let the scarcity do the rest of the work. It’s not a bad strategy in our view but if you’re looking for value, look elsewhere.

Where it sits in the calendar

Drop Six follows the Rooftop Edition, and continues a run we mapped out when MINI first named the Icon Drops campaign back in June. Of the eight editions on that calendar, the GT nameplate carries more built-in weight than most, since it’s the only one with a direct three-generation bloodline running from 1969 to now, something we detailed in our full look at what’s coming across the next twelve months.

The 1998 GT is available to reserve now, with two drops left in the Icon Drops calendar before the campaign wraps in early 2027.

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