Mini Cars in the News

The Mini is a true British icon and one of the most famous car brands in the world. There are innumerable drivers clubs for fans of the Mini, and even more online groups and websites dedicated to the car. Considering the popularity that the Mini has seen since its launch in 1959 it is perhaps unsurprising that the car has hit the headlines with many national and even international news stories many times over the course of its life. Not only that, but it has also been a big part of popular culture, starring in films in a way that no other car could – the Mini cars in the Italian Job, for example, are perhaps the most famous stars of the film, which is identified with these cars in the popular imagination even more that with any of its human actors.
The Mini has been in the news many times for winning a wide range of prestigious awards and honours. Amongst the most memorable and important of these were the ‘Car of the Century’ award from Autocar magazine in 1995, ‘European Car of the Century’ awarded by the public in an extensive online poll set up by the Global Automotive Elections Foundation in 1999 which took responses from across the whole world, and ‘Number One Classic Car of All Time’ from Classic & Sports Car magazine in 1996.
Of course all of these awards are ultimately subjective to a certain extent, but you cannot argue with pure numbers. With a total of 5.3 million sales, Minis are the most popular British cars ever made.
The headlines and news stories have not always been positive for Mini, however, as the biggest story of recent times came when Rover, the brands owners, hit major financial difficulties. As a result of this BMW decided to sell of most of the firm’s assets, but the German company did recognise the power of the iconic British brand and decided to keep hold of Mini in order to reinvigorate the brand.
Since then the big news stories for Mini have all been about the design, production and eventual release of a range of cars manufactured by BMW and built on an entirely new platform with BMW’s own engineering expertise and proprietary technology mated with the unique design and fun driving experience that Mini cars have always been known for.
The Mini brand is now as strong as ever and seems to be in safe hands, so fans can expect many more news stories for many more years to come.