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David Brown Mini Remastered Marshall Edition is amped-up

This year marks the 60th anniversary of British audio brand Marshall Amplification, and the company is celebrating with a special version of another British icon with the help of David Brown Automotive. The result is a limited run of David Brown's Mini Remastered Marshall Edition, packed to the gills with equipment and design references to the audio company. The Mini Remastered is painted entirely black, even most of the chrome trimmings. Gold accents such as the stripes, grille and wheel rims complete the Marshall look. The grille itself is also made to look like the grilles on Marshall speakers. The interior turns up the Marshall influence to 11. Even more gold accents appear from the stitching to the knurled control knobs and handles. The door panels feature fabric sections designed to match the speaker covers of Marshall amplifiers. The sound system features a Pioneer head unit, but all the speakers are from Marshall, including lower units with the signature white logos. Inside the glovebox is a pair of wireless Marshall headphones that sit atop a wireless charging point. And finishing it all off are the pedals with skip track (clutch), pause (brake) and play (gas) symbols. The trunk is the highlight of the car, though. It contains a Marshall guitar amplifier with its own power supply so that you can rock out wherever you park. A Marshall Bluetooth speaker is also packed into the back, in case you need tunes somewhere else. Only 60 Marshall Editions will be built. They all come with a 1.3-liter four-cylinder making 83 horsepower and 98 pound-feet of torque. The only transmission is a five-speed manual. Both left- and right-hand drive models are available. Pricing hasn't been announced, but part of the sales will go to a British charity called Music Venue Trust that has been providing concert venues funding during the pandemic. David Brown Automotive is taking reservations now, and deliveries will come later this year. Related video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

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.

Mini Countryman Panamericana PHEV will tackle 16,000-mile trek

In addition to the electric version of the classic Mini, the cheeky British BMW subsidiary has another battery-powered offering to electrify attendees of the New York Auto Show. This one is a special version of the Mini Cooper SE Countryman ALL4, slated for a particularly impressive journey. The Mini Countryman Panamericana Plug-In Hybrid — or, rather, three of them — will traverse the world's longest north-south roadway route, traveling from North America to Tierra Del Fuego, at the very southernmost tip of South America. The biggest Mini gets a just a couple of upgrades for the high-mileage adventure, including tires with "emergency running characteristics" and a roof rack to carry a spare. The trip is meant to serve as a demonstration of the plug-in Mini's durability and performance, highlighting the benefits of a car combining electric mobility with traditional gasoline versatility. Its electric and gasoline motors provide a total of 224 horsepower, putting power to the front and rear wheels as needed. Mini notes that the Pan-American Highway, or the Panemericana, covers a total of about 16,000 miles, and requires a boat ride to cross the incomplete inter alia near the border between Panama and Colombia. The journey covers a number of different climatic zones, mountains and jungle and a range of surfaces ranging from smooth highways to gravel roads. Mini will be documenting the journey to the bottom of the world on its Instagram account. We'll be watching. Related Video: Featured Gallery Mini Countryman Panamericana Plug-In Hybrid View 19 Photos News Source: Mini Green New York Auto Show MINI Crossover Hatchback Electric Hybrid 2018 new york auto show panamericana