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2020 Mini Cooper John Cooper Works GP is relatively efficient

The 2020 Mini Cooper John Cooper Works GP is on track to be a heck of a hot hatch what with its over-the-top styling and 301 horsepower and 332 pound-feet of torque. It's also going to be a bit more frugal than the competition. We know this because the EPA released fuel economy numbers for the little monster. In town, the GP will return 24 miles per gallon, and it will get 30 mpg on the highway. Combined driving will result in 26 mpg. The Volkswagen Golf R with it dual-clutch automatic ties the Mini on the highway and in combined driving, but is down by 1 mpg in town. The Honda Civic Type R and Hyundai Veloster N each get worse fuel economy across the board. Both get 22 mpg in town and 25 in combined driving. The Honda then gets 28 mpg on the highway and the Hyundai gets 29 mpg. In defense of the other cars, they are more practical, as they all have usable rear seats, whereas the Mini has ditched its vestigial rear chairs. The Honda and the Hyundai also only come with manual transmissions, which nowadays aren't usually as efficient as automatic transmissions. But on the other hand, the Mini makes more power than all but the Honda, which beats it by only by 5 horses, and it makes substantially more torque than the rest. Regardless, if you happen to want to use just a bit less fuel in your hot hatchback, the Mini may be the choice for you. Related Video:    

Mini ditches four-seat Countryman

Mini is walking away from the rear bucket seats in its Countryman crossover. MotoringFile.com reports that starting in 2013, the CUV will no longer offer just two seats in the second row. Originally, Mini was forced to offer the buckets due to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration rules governing the the minimum vehicle width for the allowance of three-wide seating. That rule was recently changed, which allowed Mini to offer the bench seat. Not surprisingly, few buyers have opted for the awkward bucket-and-rail configuration since. Moving forward, all Countryman models will also come with the vehicle's flat-load rear floor as well.
During our time with our long-term Countryman, we found the middle rail between the two buckets to be a bit gimmicky, especially given the fact that the cup holders were only large enough to accommodate a 12-ounce can.

The UK votes for Brexit and it will impact automakers

It's the first morning after the United Kingdom voted for what's become known as Brexit – that is, to leave the European Union and its tariff-free internal market. Now begins a two-year process in which the UK will have to negotiate with the rest of the EU trading bloc, which is its largest export market, about many things. One of them may be tariffs, and that could severely impact any automaker that builds cars in the UK. This doesn't just mean companies that you think of as British, like Mini and Jaguar. Both of those automakers are owned by foreign companies, incidentally. Mini and Rolls-Royce are owned by BMW, Jaguar and Land Rover by Tata Motors of India, and Bentley by the VW Group. Many other automakers produce cars in the UK for sale within that country and also export to the EU. Tariffs could damage the profits of each of these companies, and perhaps cause them to shift manufacturing out of the UK, significantly damaging the country's resurgent manufacturing industry. Autonews Europe dug up some interesting numbers on that last point. Nissan, the country's second-largest auto producer, builds 475k or so cars in the UK but the vast majority are sent abroad. Toyota built 190k cars last year in Britain, of which 75 percent went to the EU and just 10 percent were sold in the country. Investors are skittish at the news. The value of the pound sterling has plummeted by 8 percent as of this writing, at one point yesterday reaching levels not seen since 1985. Shares at Tata Motors, which counts Jaguar and Land Rover as bright jewels in its portfolio, were off by nearly 12 percent according to Autonews Europe. So what happens next? No one's terribly sure, although the feeling seems to be that the jilted EU will impost tariffs of up to 10 percent on UK exports. It's likely that the UK will reciprocate, and thus it'll be more expensive to buy a European-made car in the UK. Both situations will likely negatively affect the country, as both production of new cars and sales to UK consumers will both fall. Evercore Automotive Research figures the combined damage will be roughly $9b in lost profits to automakers, and an as-of-yet unquantified impact on auto production jobs. Perhaps the EU's leaders in Brussels will be in a better mood in two years, and the process won't devolve into a trade war. In the immediate wake of the Brexit vote, though, the mood is grim, the EU leadership is angry, and investors are spooked.