Auto News 5

The third generation of the modern-day Mini is making its debut at the 2013 Los Angeles auto show and will reach showrooms in March. Using a new front-wheel-drive platform that will be shared with a new family of small, front-wheel-drive BMWs, the Mini will appear first as the hardtop (as the standard model is known). The rollout of the new version will follow the roughly one-per-year cadence of the current cars, with the convertible, the Clubman, the Countryman, and so on following in sequence. Until they are replaced, the current versions of those older models will sell alongside the new cars, as Mini’s factory in Oxford, U.K., has the flexibility to produce both simultaneously.