It’s nearly 20 years to the day that the ‘new’ MINI first arrived; the official date the car first went on sale in the UK, and therefore the celebrated birthday for the new MINI, was 7 July 2001. Full production began at Plant Oxford a few weeks earlier on 26 April, but the full story of the new MINI goes back further than that. Way back.
As with all motoring icons, replacing the classic Mini was never going to be an easy task, but that didn’t stop everyone trying. Over the years, the Mini had fallen under the ownership of some pretty big and well-established car manufacturers, including the likes of BMC, British Leyland, Rover, and, of course, BMW.
EARLY ATTEMPTS
By rights, a replacement model should have been ready to supersede the original by the end of the Sixties, but somehow the Mini lived on. By the start of the Eighties, British Leyland had recognised that the Mini had surely
