2011 Mini Cooper S Clean Carfax, 6-spd Manual, Panoramic Sunroof, Hea on 2040-cars

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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.

BMW-designed Mini Cooper celebrates its 20th birthday

Mini is celebrating a major milestone. It unveiled the original Cooper Hardtop 20 years ago at the 2000 edition of the Paris auto show. More than merely a new car, this retro-styled hatchback laid the foundations for the entire brand. Its predecessors sometimes wore Mini emblems, but they were always sold by various companies including Austin, Morris, Rover, and, through a licensing deal, Innocenti. The name didn't officially denote a standalone carmaker until the hatchback was presented to the public in the French capital two decades ago. The decision to make Mini a brand came from executives at the top of BMW, which purchased England-based MG-Rover in 1994. Developing a Mini for the 21st century was a Herculean task. Releasing an evolution of the original car, which made its debut in 1959, was completely out of the question; it had outlived its expiration date by decades, and was a fossil in automotive terms. The new model had to be designed on a blank slate. And yet, the development team decided it still needed to look like a Mini, and it also had to drive like one. After experimenting with several concepts, like the futuristic ACV30 (pictured below) shown in 1997, designers settled on a basic set of guidelines. 1997 Mini ACV30 concept View 4 Photos According to Mini, the project brief stated the 21st-century model needed to have short overhangs, round headlights, a hexagonal grille, and room for four passengers. It also had to be front-wheel drive, a layout that made the original car a packaging masterpiece (and, admittedly, a bit of a nightmare to work on), but stylists decided to give it a hatch in the name of practicality. Finally, product planners decided to push the Mini upmarket, away from its roots as a value-friendly alternative to bubble cars, and embed it firmly into premium territory. Called R50 internally, the hatchback was initially offered in two variants named One and Cooper, respectively. Mini expanded the range in record time. Model year 2002 brought the hotter Cooper S (R53), a turbodiesel engine joined the European line-up in 2003, and a convertible (R52) was introduced in 2004. Sales in the United States started for the 2002 model year, and driving enthusiasts gave it a warm reception. It was well worth the wait. BMW never planned to keep Mini anchored to a single model. It introduced the second-generation Cooper in 2006, and new variants arrived in rapid-fire succession. By 2010, there was a Mini to suit nearly everyone's needs.

How Mini shacked up with John Cooper

The late Sir Alexander Arnold Constantine Issigonis, Alec Issignonis to his Internet friends, designed a car that was sold as the Morris Mini-Minor, the Austin Seven and later the Austin Mini. Go to the Mini USA website and check out the models, though, and every one of them is called a Cooper of some sort, e.g., Mini Cooper Paceman or Mini Cooper S Roadster. So who is Cooper?
It's probably obvious that it's the same Cooper we get in "John Cooper Works," those JCW Minis that always make up the top of the line. But many probably don't know that that John Cooper, founder of John Cooper Cars, is the same man who accidentally got the motorsports world to switch to rear-engined race cars and the same Formula One constructor who won two titles in 1959 and 1960 and who fielded drivers like Bruce McLaren and Stirling Moss.
On its way to driving the Mini John Cooper Works GP II, XCAR goes back to the beginning to find out when Alec met John, and how the first Mini Cooper came out in 1961, two years after the first Mini. You can watch the story and the car review in the video below.