2011 Mini Cooper S Countryman All4 Automatic 4-door Wagon 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.

Honda engines and giant killing in the classic Mini Cooper

Electric Federal has taken a fresh look back at the enduring legacy of original Mini with a video interview with Heritage Garage's Graham Reid, one of the foremost experts on classic Minis. As Electric Federal points out, it's important to remember that the Mini did not start out as a performance car. It was built in response to the Suez Canal crisis of the mid-50s, which had a similar effect on British gas prices as OPEC did on American prices in the 1970s - rationing and rapid price jumps.
Through the years, Minis have grown from their budget roots to become seriously competent performance machines. As Reid says, a 150-horsepower Mini on the right track should have no problem outpacing a contemporary Porsche 911.
For some time now, classic Mini owners have been dropping Honda engines under the tiny hoods of their classics. With up to 250 horsepower pulling a car that tips the scales at barely 1,200 pounds, the upgraded Mini is "a real sleeper," Reid says. Interestingly, Reid doesn't mention another increasingly common swap in the Mini community - Suzuki Hayabusa-powered Coopers.

Mini teases third-gen hatch to debut next week

All it takes is a small spark to set off a fire. Just look at what has happened since BMW brought back the Mini in the early 2000s. What started with a hatchback has since spawned more bodystyles than we care to count and almost as many imitators. The second generation followed in 2007, and now Mini is preparing to launch the third.
The new Mini is scheduled to debut a week from now on November 18 at the Oxford plant in England, just days before the LA Auto Show and Tokyo Motor Show kick off and on the birthday of the original's designer Sir Alec Issigonis.
The third generation of the popular retro hatchback is expected to closely follow the lead set by the Mini Vision concept revealed a few months ago, but then we already knew that, having seen numerous undisguised photos of the new car in action. Still, the half-minute teaser video embedded below does a decent job of drumming up some enthusiasm, so if you're enamored of the Anglo-Saxon retromobile, head on down to check it out.