I went to Cowley the other day to see the expanded facilities that will allow production to increase to 240,000 cars a year.
With more than 500 robots and a quiet, well-ordered environment, this now looks like a serious modern car factory.
For its second generation Mini, BMW has created what it calls a production triangle in the UK, with the new petrol engines coming from Hams Hall, Birmingham, and the body pressings from the former British Leyland/Rover plant at Swindon.
For most of the process Mini Convertibles (still based on the original BMW Mini and using the Tritec engines from Brazil) can travel down the same lines as the hatchbacks and the system is flexible enough to accommodate other variants, the first of which will be the Clubman estate which goes on sale before the end of this year.
The Clubman wasn't much of a secret given that, over the past 18 months, Mini has presented a series of concept estate cars, with a longer wheelbase and square tail.
The question was: what would the estate version be called? Previous (pre-BMW) Mini estate car names, Traveller and Countryman, were considered but Clubman, which was applied to a range of 1970s Leyland Minis with different front-end styling, was thought to be more acceptable internationally.
The new Clubman will be a
five-door but not as we know it. There is one door on the left-hand side, two on the right, and
van-type double doors at the rear.
The additional side door which is rear-hinged to give easy access to rear seats is actually on the wrong side for UK market right-hand drive cars. BMW says that it cannot be switched because the fuel filler is on the left-hand side.
The Mini design studio in Munich is now finalising the new convertible that is due to appear in 2008 and will put all Minis on the same platform. There are likely to be further variations in future, including an SUV-like
Mini crossover.
The new Mini One and Cooper D have just gone on sale. The Cooper D uses a 1.6-litre HDI engine from Peugeot and with 110bhp is a much better performer than its diesel predecessor – hence the Cooper designation. But at £2,595 more than the 95bhp
1.4-litre Mini One and £1,195 more than the 120bhp petrol-engined Mini Cooper, it isn't a sensible proposition for an average-mileage UK buyer. It is, however, particularly significant in the BMW scheme of things as it has the lowest CO2 figure of any car in its range: 118 g/km – and is its first in Band B for UK road tax.
Later this year BMW will fit its latest fuel economy devices – idle stop-start and regeneration of braking energy to charge the battery – as standard on Minis with manual transmission.
An engineer told me this would bring the Cooper D CO2 output below 110g/km, equal to the Peugeot 107.

Across the water
Not long ago I was at another BMW factory on the other side of the Atlantic. The plant at Spartanburg, South Carolina, makes the X5 SUV and the Z4 sports car, although in this case all the engines come from Germany and the body panels are from outside suppliers.
Spartanburg, which currently has a capacity of 200,000 cars a year, is also set for expansion. At the end of 2005 it was closed for a month to combine two separate production lines into one multi-model line. BMW intends to make the X3 there when that moves to the new generation at the end of the decade – the current X3 is made under contract by Magna in Austria. Before then, early next year, it will launch the X6, a crossover described as a “sports activity coupe” based on the new X5.
We can also expect BMW's first full hybrids – developed in association with General Motors and DaimlerChrysler – to come out of Spartanburg.
The initial applications of this system, which is derived from GM's two-mode hybrid technology – incorporating electric motors within a conventional transmission housing – will be the heavier SUVs from each company.