Millenium Mini

By ALISTAIR SLOANE

The new Mini will go on sale in New Zealand in about 18 months, roughly six months after it makes its debut in Europe.

Who knows what it will cost here, what with the New Zealand dollar continuing to tread water.

The only guide is that its owner, BMW - which retained Mini in the Rover sell-off - says the entry-level car in Germany will cost "significantly below" 30,000 deutschmarks. In our money yesterday, that was about $31,500.

But the entry-level Mini will be the last to arrive, at least some months after the performance models the Cooper and Cooper S.

A conservative guess - based on speculation in Britain and Australia and bearing in mind that the Mini is a well-equipped BMW in disguise - is that about $12,000 will separate the Cooper S from the standard model, with the Cooper priced somewhere in the middle.

There is already talk in both right-hand-drive countries that BMW intends to

undercut the price of that other reincarnated classic, Volkswagen's New Beetle. One obvious difference is engine size: the Beetle is 2 litres, the Mini 1.6.

The production version of the Mini was unveiled in Britain the other day, 41 years and 5.5 million models after the original broke ground on August 26, 1959. It will officially be launched at the Paris Motor Show next week.

The 21st-century model stays true to the original's roots, with a front-drive engine and wheels on the car's four corners, just the way eccentric, Turkish-born British designer Sir Alec Issigonis penned it.

The 1959 model was only 3m long but it could seat four adults, cruise at 90 km/h, and had independent suspension all-round, a set-up unheard of in a small car in 1959.

The engine was mounted east-west to save space. Other carmakers had done this but Issigonis trumped them by putting the gearbox below the engine in an enlarged oil sump, thereby enabling the Mini to use a bigger four-cylinder powerplant.

A feature of the Mini was the handling and a rubber-cone suspension system that became stiffer under heavy loads. It was cheap and efficient and helped the car to win numerous rallies, including the gruelling Monte Carlo.

But BMW's Mini is completely new from the ground up - 500mm longer, with bigger wheels, a wide track and bulbous bonnet and beefier in the flesh than in pictures.

But bigger doesn't necessarily mean more space. Engineers reworked the rear suspension of the 3-Series into the Mini and the result, say those who have driven it, is a car with an exceptional ride and handling but limited space for boot storage and rear passengers.

Front occupants won't mind, because the low-set seats, wide cabin, sparse dashboard and wide-aperture doors create a feeling of space. The convenient door bins of the original Mini are gone, replaced by a visible side-impact safety beam.

"The Mini is a piece of automotive history," says its chief architect, American Frank Stephenson, whose design was one of 15 full-size models submitted. Five came from BMW in Germany, five from its California subsidiary Designworks, four from Rover and one from an outsider

"Our mission was to combine the emotional power of the former model with the technology of the future," he says.

"The Cooper is not a retro-design car. Rather it stands for evolution. It has the same genes and characteristics of its predecessor, but at the same time it is larger, more powerful, more muscular and more exciting."

The Mini's aluminium interior was the main talking point at its launch last week. It is not unlike that of the Audi TT, especially in the design of the dash and mid-mounted speedometer with circular air vents, and in the braces which anchor the dash to the floor and contain the made-to-measure stereo system.

Steel rocker switches in the dash control functions such as electric windows and door locks, and on the Cooper and Cooper S a rev counter sits on the steering wheel cowling.

The Mini is better in the flesh than photographs, with its chrome grille and big headlights adding to the car's character. The boldness extends to the one-piece steel bonnet and wheel arches, the alloy door handles, and the frameless windows which drop down when the doors open and close, just like a BMW coupe.

The car is powered by a 1.6-litre four-cylinder engine made by DaimlerChrysler in Brazil. It produces 67kW in the entry-level Mini, 86kW in the Cooper and 112kW in the supercharged Cooper S.

John Cooper, the former British racing driver who engineered the original performance versions in the early 1960s, had a hand in the latest models. Safety equipment in the three-car range includes airbags and anti-lock ABS brakes.

The visible side-impact beams in the Mini's doors point to how far design and safety has come in 40 years. It was said that Issigonis shaped the door bins in the original Mini to hold a bottle of gin, his favourite drink. The door pockets in the new Mini can barely hold a can of Coke.