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In 1959, Alec Issigonis answered a fuel crisis with a stroke of genius: a transverse engine, wheels pushed to the corners and a cabin that swallowed four adults in a car barely three metres long. The original Mini went on to win the Monte Carlo Rally, star in The Italian Job and sell more than five million units over four decades.
When BMW relaunched MINI in 2001, it kept what mattered, the go-kart steering, the wheel-at-each-corner stance and the sense of occasion, and wrapped it in premium build quality. The Hatch became a Convertible, a Clubman, a Countryman and an Aceman, and John Cooper Works turned the brand into a serious hot-hatch contender.
Today MINI is going electric with the Cooper Electric, Aceman and Countryman Electric, built around a minimalist round OLED display and a design language it calls Charismatic Simplicity. The powertrain is changing; the grin at the first roundabout is not.
