Saturday, January 6, 2007

MINI is both the name of a United Kingdom subsidiary of BMW, and a car produced by that subsidiary since 2001. The car is marketed as a "retro" redesign of the original Mini, which was manufactured by the British Motor Corporation and its successors from 1959 to 2000. To distinguish it from its predecessor, the 'classic Mini', the brand name for the new car is 'MINI', written in all capital letters. It is sometimes called 'The BMW MINI' (despite MINI being a separate subsidiary like Jaguar is to Ford), 'The New MINI', or simply 'MINI'. The MINI is manufactured in Cowley, Oxford, United Kingdom, in what was historically the Morris car plant.