Discover the thrilling history of the Mini Cooper, from its humble beginnings to the high-octane John Cooper Works models. Dive into a legacy of British automotive heritage with each twist and turn of Mini’s story.
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mini Supercar no no the mini is no Supercar but it’s a lot of fun to drive and it’s fun that you can afford the modern Mini Cooper a non-traditional sports car offering high performance affordable fun mini is such a fantastic British brand it’s got a lot of Heritage and a lot of culture it’s got a lot of history to it a quarter of a century ago the mark nearly Fades away there was the uncertainty there was some unrest now this British [Music] icon is Riding High thanks to a tightly knit team there’s a lot of camaraderie we’ve worked together with a lot of people for a long time so you filled up that team spirit a strong sense of family I grew up in Ox my granddad worked here in 50s in 60s basically on following suit and a unique Apprentice program we’re protecting old school engineering skills the result is a beacon of industrial hope it just goes to show the fact that we are still a horse for manufacturing within the UK confidence that’s best expressed in the fastest mini ever made the John Cooper Works addition that we make at the plant here is our super car the modern mini coopa the Everyman supercar [Music] [Music] it’s a car born during a global oil crisis one of the most influential designs of the the 20th century and a quirky machine that’s unapologetically British the mini was born in England and it’s great that it’s still produced here it’s ours it’s quirky it’s got to look there’s a lot of cars out there at the moment that you look at and you have to see the badge before you know what it is you see a mini you know you’re seeing a mini minis aren’t built for statistical bragging rights but rather Smiles per liter a fast little turbocharged go-kart you’re pretty high on the Thrills per dollar scale few machines offer as much performance in a smaller footprint the mini brand has always been about make a lot of performance from a tiny little package base models start at just € 18,000 but if you want a little more bang for your buck the topof the line John Cooper Works Edition clocks in at a very reasonable [Music] 32,000 it’s going to surprise people but the mini is democratized performance it’s a small quick sharp handling car that’s a lot of fun to drive at a reasonable price point Ultra affordable performance paired with a fervently British sensibility if you see stereotypical British things you get the Bulldog you get the the Union flag and you get a mini it’s so intrinsically linked which is is nice because every country’s got their [Music] thing today the brand sells cars in over 110 countries and every single one starts the very same [Music] way it’s got a strong brand identity and reaches to every corner of the world so I often look at the destinations of the cars that we build on the line and it’s amazing one car to America the next car to China then a car that goes to France then Australia New Zealand you look at the bill sheets I mean Korea it w i mean and and the sales in China quite amazing the mini is a worldwide phenomenon the requires three distinct factories to get the job done at the Swindon pressing plant they manufacture body panels and [Music] subassemblies [Music] they build three and four cylinder engines at hams Hall in North warshire and every day they produce a thousand completed machines at the Oxford Assembly [Music] Plant currently we’re building the three door hch the five door hch and the brand new Mini Clubman in the past we built up to five models on the same line in a given year they manufacture more than 200,000 machines so the car has come in from the paint shop comes in a set sequence we’ve already started to fit some of the parts of the car every 68 seconds there’s a car leaving the line we are working more or less 245 so three shifts five days a week the speed necessitates a lengthy 1.7 km assembly line there’s 224 stations on the main line so that’s from when it first comes in from the paint shop to our final station nearly 5,000 Crafts People bolt and wrench parts inside a facility that is nearly the size of 100 football pitches we’re now at harness fit so this is one of the really complicated parts of our process we’ve got a big thing here is the oven we’ve got 18 harnesses in there 60° all the time they’re all sequenced in there we get the harest one by one we take them out and then we fit them around the car clip them in and they’re all ready for the people to fix their parts to each harness weighs 20 kg and has over 500 clips that have to be snapped into place my section is one of the most physically demanding areas because of the harness because of the uh bending because of the thickness of the harness it is quite a hard area there’s little downtime thanks to the high station count and the fast cycle times to keep the line humming along workers are backed up by another team of Associates these guys are the Formula 1 Guys these are the ones that put the cars together they’re the most important parts of our of our company I’m here as to support function so if they’ve got an issue any problems they let me know and I jump in and let them get on with the next bit we do do our best all the BLS are we’re all basically on the same page most of the time and uh we all strive to build the perfect car and that’s what the mini is it’s becoming the perfect little car and it’s a good job it’s a proud place to work for isn’t it the passion here is palpable and historic this facility is the oldest Mass manufacturer for Automotives built in 1913 the Oxford site has produced over 11 and2 million cars spread over seven different brands know it’s historic it’s iconic we’re very proud to work here and work for the name mini very proud to know that I’ve been party to the manufacturing of that product to be a part of such an iconic thing as Min is uh I think for me it’s a great opportunity there’s so many companies who change the basic formula mini hasn’t done that it’s still a fun drive driving car as it was back in the 50s when it was first launched the mini might be a British icon but its roots take hold thanks to a French diplomat named Ferdinand deep he’s inspired while reading a book about Napoleon’s early attempt to connect the Mediterranean and the Red Sea it takes 37 years but in 1869 his dream becomes reality when the Suez Canal opens the Waterway becomes a hub for international trade and by the early 50s 2/3 of Europe’s oil supply travels through it however in 1956 Egypt nationalizes the canal the ACT starts a chain reaction that eventually leads to a worldwide oil crisis the mini story starts with actually a fuel crisis an oil crisis and a need for vehicles to be uh fuel efficient and affordable in Britain the government institutes a fuel rationing program that limits motorists to Just 4 gallons of petrol per month the restrictions Inspire the British Motor Company or BMC to focus on fuel economy and they ask car designer sir Alec is agones to create a Thrifty machine BMC came to him and said we need a car due to the sus crisis in 1956 the task has a single mandate fit four people comfortably in a car that can’t be longer than 10 ft he started in his kitchen I heard uh setting up four chairs and invited friends and looked how much space do four people need actually most cars at the time offer rear wheeel drive and use an engine that’s longitudinally mounted is aon’s inspiration is to spin the engine 90° his best move was to turn the engine transverse uh that’s a principle which is set I think for small and compact cars till today it’s kind of a really genius construction principle next isonas decides to make his car front-wheel drive finally he Engineers a compact transmission that fits beneath the engine not behind it ison’s entire drivetrain occupies just 2 ft of the new machine and allows the remaining 80% of the space place to be dedicated to passengers as it turns out he also designed a car that was a lot of fun to drive and people started figuring this out pretty quick these things handle pretty good they were a lot of fun in 1959 the British Motor Company launches the mini a two-door 4-cylinder car featuring a monoco shell initially the machine is offered with a 34 horsepower engine but gets a whopping 36 m to the gallon he fuel efficiency numbers even today yet it’s what happens next that helps coin the term hot hatch just two years after its introduction the min’s unique design characteristics remarkable handling and funfill Driving Experience Captivate Britain alones he was trying to make a Compact and affordable little runaround family car needed as much space as possible but also be compact enough to fit in little tight spaces Park in cities as it turned out and the way he designed the car it actually goes around the corner really well and people figured this out really quickly among those people is Formula 1 team owner John Cooper and John Cooper actually was a Constructor who was working for the Formula 1 and he was a friend of Elegy GS he recognizes the potential of the mini in 1961 Cooper BS out the standard cars engine fits twin carburetors disc brakes and a racing derived close ratio gearbox the result is the mini Koopa a race car for the Everyman if you give man something motorized they will find a way to race it that’s kind of how it works and that’s true for bar stools and that’s true true for motorcycles and it’s true for the mini by the late ’70s the brand sells over 4 million machines John kber was a racing driver who raced Minis and who also hot rotted them up the company owes a bit of their their popularity to his racing success today hot rodded compact three and five door machines are called hot hatches a term that John Cooper helped originate and one benefiting the current top-of-the-line mini JCW JCW stands for John Cooper Works and that’s an homage to John Cooper who raced the first minis this is a brand that you know for its humble Origins for being a cute car actually has a lot of performance behind it super car super performance but it’s affordable to everybody even the plant I see so many of these cars where people you can see a big smile on their face just driving them the JCW is fun to whip around a track but it begins just like every other machine at the swinden pressing plant we’re in the blanking area of the press shop at Swindon this is sort of the initial step of the process we take coiled steer which you can see see here behind me and we sort of unwind that into our blanking tools and we cut from that sheet steel it is quite big this coil for example is about 20 tons worth on average we get delivered about 15 Tons in each coil the plant starts in 1954 and 5 years later becomes the largest employer in the area it’s a real growing process you know you join here as sort of a young guy a little bit apprehensive of the world around you as you can see it’s a big Factory it makes you quite nervous but you grow into it at swinden they produce nearly 90% of the Mini’s pressings and the majority of the subassemblies such as the doors Bonnets and tailgates we’re now at the sort of tail end of the blanking process what we saw earlier was the coiled steel coming in it’s now been through this blanking line chopped if you like into sheet steel what you can see here behind you is blanks for the mini sunroof the sunroof blanks are extremely thin the height of each one is equal to just seven sheets of paper stacked on top of each other sort of press like this in the first operation which is the forming press um where all the shaping done presses vary in age and power the largest uses 5,000 tons of force that’s half the weight of the Eiffel Tower and it presses down on a sheet of metal in mere seconds this is the final stage in the pressing process we cut the sheet steer we formed it into a panel and now we just check the outer surface for for cosmetic defects to make sure it’s just perfect for the customer after a part is pressed it Heads next door to the welding Hall the parts are brought here and we assemble them into what we call subassemblies over 200 welding robots create body parts a jolted to time robots offer pinpoint accuracy feedability in the process and speed the robots better move fast the welding shop cycle time is tied directly to the speed of the Oxford final assembly plant each individual cell is a 60c roughly cycle time is what we aim for we have to match the cycle time in Oxford in that respect I think the volume of panels produced here is quite mind-blowing we produce 11,000 say assemblies a day which is pretty [Music] staggering the majority of the finished parts are sent nearly 35 miles to final assembly this is huge for ox the employment that it brings the Kudos that it brings I mean we see visitors every day of the week from all over the world that want to come in and see see other the cars built and that’s totally understandable I’d want to see it the facility opens in 1913 and just two decades later accounts for nearly 30% of England’s total exports but in the back half of the 20th century the success Fades fast the British automotive industry collapses multiple times by the 1980s the plant has already gone through six different owners years of minimal investment Doom it to an uncertain future the feeling was one of great trepidation we didn’t know what the future would bring so so we knew that the future was very very difficult for the plant in 1994 BMW buys the Rover Group which at the time owns Mini for nearly € 1.2 billion by the time BMW bought mini it wasn’t really a car company the way we think of most mainstream car companies they weren’t coming out with new products or anything 6 years later BMW relaunches the mini brand the goal isn’t to help a nation but rather the bottom line in the late ’90s BMW had a lot of aspirations to grow but if they want to expand they need to have some less expensive cars some more affordable Everyman kind of cars they don’t want to hurt their name by putting it on something really cheap at the time some critics Pan the reborn mini for being both sacriligious and a less expensive Beamer you could see the Mini Cooper as my first Beamer the modern mini Bears little resemblance to the original Mini it’s much bigger it’s much heavier it doesn’t drive like the original minis at all other commentators contend the reborn machine opens up a premium product to a broader Market you got people saying well I can’t afford a BMW but hey here’s this mini it’s stylish it’s different it’s fun and it’s built by the same guys that built a BMW 3 Series there’s a lot of that BMW in this car so you’re kind of getting the best of both you’re getting this iconic Bri style and you’re getting that German cache that you want the success story starts thanks to a very small car but it actually means quite a bit more it’s the biggest employer outside of the public sector you take a walk through Oxford and you’ll see features harking back to manufacturing here for the last 100 years it means an awful lot revitalizing the Oxford plant helps both the local community and members of the mini family it’s quite a big family business here you’ll find a lot of generations work here so it’s passed on from generation to generation there’s a lot of people that have had a lot of history my father for example worked here my grandfather also worked here but there’s people that go back three four generations I’m the last member of my family to come here my sister works here my father’s worked here here my grandparents worked here back in the very old days my grand worked here building parts for I think it was field tanks for airplanes my mom worked here in payroll I’m the last one here having fun starts on the line but ends up imbued in the car itself it’s just such a fun little car the feeling is amazing it it’s just great and they’re great to drive as well I have one it’s a be people that make the plant you could call it love it’s just such a well-known and well-liked brand isn’t it the renewed version in 2000ish rears that love for everyone I think cuz it’s just quirky and it’s not like a sort of f standard car it sort of it draws the eye doesn’t it the catchy and quirky Mini turns heads thanks to one of the most sophisticated body shops in the automotive world where every day they assemble a th000 new shells blazingly fast thanks to 1,000 robots 6,000 welds and the hard work of the next generation of mini Crafts People every day at the Oxford final assembly plant brand new Minis roll off the line nearly every minute they still build them in England and they put Union Jacks on the roof and play up the the britishness of them the process begins in a highly automated Body Shop we’re in body and white the body is what you see being built over here it’s the bare bones of the car we fit the cloes to it trim pieces the windows the door cars Etc all get fitted later on BMW spends over 750 million upgrading the site the total buildup time is around a day from start of the process to end of the process where the car gets delivered into the paint shop 650 workers split over three shifts oversee all the robots it’s nonstop it’s it’s kicks off at 6:00 in the morning we work around the clock until Friday night there’s constantly something different happening always always you know the robots are moving in the background you have to keep your wits about you over 435 different steel and synthetic parts are connected 90% of the tasks are automated the body sides get built up in three modular steps so we go from a frame framing one body which is you wouldn’t really recognize it as a body shell framing two where a lot more of the structural rigidity comes in framing three starts to resemble something more of a car and then the hang on parts are all fitted and that’s where you’ll really recognize it as a as a body on average a finished body in white weighs nearly 400 kilos once the welding robots have their fun a special perceptron camera double checks the work the system is accurate up to 1/1 of a MM which is just about the width of a human hair when a body is finished it’s time to add a splash of British color inside the paint shop where it will take 9 and a half more hours to give a new machine its vibrant exterior we’re at the point now where we’ve got the cars coming over from the body in white the first step is to rinse the body shells in a chemical bath our first process is our pre treatment it goes through different baths with different chemicals making sure the car is perfectly clean and ready to take the paint after taking a quick dip the body is baked at 180° C which gives the shell a greenish primer tint it goes into a complete dip tank we we get the first layer of paint in it we call Eco just paint being applied through electrostatic a collection of robots applies over 77 M of seam sealer to each machine the car will then go through a small area of preparation prior to going into the color booths where all the robots will spray firstly inside the car then outside the car the color Booth features two different sets of robots the first are electrostatic machines that apply the base coat and flat colors however if you order a metallic finish then pneumatic robots join the action in total it takes roughly four liters of paint to cover a mini the huge amount of customization you can do to a mini these cars have character you can get interesting decals get interesting stripe packages interesting logos and it’s all there to make the car feel a little bit more unique than your typical 20 to $40,000 economy vehicle the fully automated facility is entirely modern but it wasn’t always this way I’ve been here a long time now I’m in my 38th year of working here I’m on my third paint shop when I first started we sprayed all them by hand and in those days all the paint had lead in them and we didn’t have air-fed masks we had just a little paper mask and that would be our day’s work and it’ll be hard Tom Bennett runs the mini paint shop and his history with the Mark goes back a long way the success story isn’t just with me my father worked in the Press shops here for 40 years and I currently got both my sons worked here one for 10 years and one for 15 years when it comes time to me to retire I’ve still got my family and this mini is a big part of my family and always has been for many generations family connections mean a great deal at the Oxford plant my brother actually worked here before me so it was for a referral a lot of my friends were moving and working here so I thought why not take the opportunity knowing someone on the inside helps get your foot in the door but it’s hard work that moves you on but I’ve been within assembly since 2003 I’ve slowly worked my way up I actually started off on the shop floor as an associate doing process the same as these guys became a team leader and now process leader the healthy amount of upward Mobility creates frequent job openings some of which are filled by former apprentices taught at the Oxford [Music] [Music] plant in 2012 the brand creates the mini Academy particularly in the UK you’re in a situation where by vocational skills plumbers electricians Carpenters those sort of people went into Decline and unfortunately now we’re paying a price for that each year 32 lucky youngsters have given the chance to learn the ins and outs of Auto production going it’s about growing that person from scratch we want to influence behaviors we want to teach life skills we want these people to be people that at the end of their apprenticeship want to have a 40-year career with our business Jason gasal is the head of The Apprentice training program he runs a highly intensive three or 4year course that offers future employees oldw World skills while also protecting the Brand’s future what we don’t want is a situation whereby we get to a stage where nobody has that old ability or that old Hands-On ability to be able to put their hand to something to fix it to keep things going while the goal is to cultivate artisanal skills the approach is utterly modern apprenticeships historically were viewed as being for people who couldn’t necessarily hack it in an academic Forum that is not the case today the people that you see around you today in this Workshop are highly academic new apprentices don’t start with tools but rather mice the academic program begins in a high-tech classroom currently at the moment we’re standing in what we call the it Suite as part of their apprenti they need to learn how to design and draw things on CAD CAD or computer AED design lets the apprentices learn their trade in the virtual world after the digital Tech it’s time for old school tools and we’re now in what we call our Technical Training Facility or if I go back to Old School in our Workshop I think it’s kind of a good mix of sort of Hands-On learning and Theory learning as well well and you get to work around all the cool cars that’s nice even though the factory is extremely automated the new apprentices start with basic handwork you can see the people working on the benches are really doing some basic down toe skills filing drilling cutting things that you would expect any base Foundation person wanting to get into engineering to be able to do once the students Master Hand Tools it’s time to move up to the motorized lathes and [Music] Mills now in your modern engineering terms you’d feed that into a computer gram and the Machine would do the turning and cutting for you we’re still old school here we want them to physically be able to put a piece of metal into a machine and make something with it after all the tools it’s time for something a bit more shocking what you see in front of you now is our electrical training area so they do a little bit on what we would term domestic electrical so how do I wire a plug how do I wire a light because there may be that situation that they need to do that doing you know the sheening and with the hand fitting and everything like that the electrical side of it it’s something I’ve never known before you know and i’ learn all these different skills that I didn’t even think I could do and was possible more importantly they then go on to plcs and programming so the equipment that controls our factories uh they get to do that learning how to program the equipment inside the plant is critically important although technology is taking massive leaps forward there is still big bits of equipment that sit out in our factories that need to be fixed nothing runs forever our utopian world would love us to have a situation like that but it doesn’t exist so what these young people are learning is should something go wrong at 2:00 in the morning they have the ability to get that fixed quickly rapid Sol Solutions and intelligent problem solving are critical skills inside the Oxford plant where brand new Minis roll off the line every 67 seconds and each shift 700 workers put their hearts and sols into every machine it’s getting your hands dirty it’s uh finding out how things work if you like that sort of thing you like working [Music] here we are proud of the product so we want to make sure it’s good for the customers and everybody enjoys it 2300 people work on eight distinct lines under this roof thousand cars a day so that’s something we’re very proud of is 1,000 cars every single day on the track modern minis move forward at a nice clip but if you look down at the dashboard it’s a throwback to another time they keep it small there’s no deviation from their philosophy I think the thing that I like the most about mini is that it’s unrepentantly mini they do it their own way and that’s it installing the iconic dashboard takes place at station 20th we’re now installing the cockpit into the vehicle so it’s very very precise it only just fits into the aperture of the door it’s then fitted onto its locating points on the dashboard and then it’s secured to the vehicle simple bolts secure the dashboard but back in the mini Academy the goal is to secure the future of the brand it takes us 4 years to qualify an apprentice we can prototype launch and build a car in 2 and a [Music] half so that gives you a kind of a time scale idea of what apprenti ships are all about they’re are massive massive investment for the long-term strategy of a business the long-term plan starts in a very internet Savvy way I applied through uh going online on the Facebook page some apprentices arrive online others show up in need of change I did do a degree in politics actually and then I sort of realized I didn’t want to do that so had a bit of a career change and here I am when you say it to someone you know it’s it always SPS a conversation so it’s not some unknown company they’re like what do they do it’s it’s quite easy to kind of talk about the cars and and where things are going so that’s always interesting it’s easy to see where the Oxford mini plant is headed today the facility is responsible for more than 10% of all the automotive production in the UK K including the hottest mini of them all the JCW the John Cooper Works Edition is the fastest machine that mini has ever made it’s 228 horsepower 2 L twin turbo motor [Music] is built inside the hams Hall facility where over 7,000 three and 4 cylinder motors come to life every single day we’re in plant hams Hall uh this is an engine plant where we machine and assemble engines behind us is the the start of the cylinder block line so this is where we machine the cylinder blocks that go into minu so these are raw Parts they come to us they cast externally and they come here uh for us to machine them the stations move in under 30 seconds and it takes about 8 hours from start to finish to build a new motor this is the start of the process where we launch the cylinder head onto the assembly line and it takes a number of stations it gets assembled we have machined heads that are machined next doors in our Machining home they come in a pallet get delivered and then they get loaded onto the assembly line by the [Music] robot the machine cylinder heads are assembled and tested what Rie is doing is he’s he’s visually inspecting the part just to make sure that there’s no defect in the components the problem with machine is Machining will uncover defects in the casting in another part of the factory they work on the crankshafts we’re on the crankshaft Machining line and we’re very close towards the end of the process and this is a super finishing process just three steps through this finishing process so there’s a rough type the finishing type Pro process and then there’s another type that picks the parts of the crankshaft that don’t don’t get picked up on this particular one here so three steps it’s a very fine uh paper yeah as you can see 1500 grit it’s very very fine it’s developed on a continuous roll so it can it continuously rolls around so you’ve always got fresh type on another line Pistons are built up this is a sub assembled piston and comrade so they’re basically traveling now on their Journey to the Piston fit station where they’ll marry up with a block it’s time to build a new motor the crankshaft is installed new engines then receed their unique identification [Music] number Pistons are connected [Music] some of the parts are very intricate and so it can be very demanding for automation to do that sort of work they fit the turbochargers the inlet manifold an engine harness so at this point it becomes a unique engine going into a unique minute a motor is now ready to be sent down the road to the Oxford final assembly [Music] plant where it will be delivered directly to the powertrain subassembly line so our engines come from hams Hall as a completely built up engine but what we now do is build them into the front suspension unit so we marry now the engine to the subframe and the front suspension and this is what you see behind us 55 Crafts People work across 25 engine subassembly stations every single process is exactly timed against the 64 seconds so meticulous planning of every single element of every single process is planned down to the last second once they finish sub assembling the [Music] motor it’s transferred across the aisle where a new Mini eager awaits its power plant where we’re standing now is what we call marriage that is a place where the engine is married with the car and we’ve got a split marriage front axle and engine and gear Bo so it’s a very precise element of the production with the engine it’s very very tight to go into the cars we’re talking millimeter Gap between the engine and the body to achieve the required Precision the team relies on a special automated system which raises the Power Plant 15 cm beneath the car then four robots Bolt the drivetrain subframe and suspension to the car 8 volts that hold the engine into the car from underneath and then there’s further ones that are from the engine bay downwards [Music] the car becomes a real car now it’s Merit now it’s proud to call itself a car workers Bolt the exhaust onto the new engine the big pieces that we’re installing here is uh the rear exhaust the heat shield further down the line the module of front end and also SE they are fitting the exhaust this is onto the hanger bracket this guy is secure in the front and this guy’s putting on the nice chrome finish so it looks quite pretty at the end we’re going to put nice shiny prissy things on the [Music] cars the battery is connected this is at the part where we fit the front end of the vehicle the front bumper the front radiator basically the front frame of the vehicle behind me the parts come in in sequence they’re board in in exactly the build sequence that we have going through our production line so they take them off the rack that they come in on on an assist and then they mate it up to the front of the vehicle so it’s the front end [Music] marriage further down the line workers fit the sport orientated Wheels we fit the wheels and secure them then further up we have underbody which is mainly under [Music] paneling Wheels which help give the mini its responsive steering people love them for racetracks and back roads it’s fun super responsive little car that you can just whip it around anything I’ve been here 14 years now it’s great it’s good company good to work for good good environment a lot of good guys here so it’s really good company the wheel fit station is fast and efficient yet it hides a tremendous amount of complexity there are over 42 different Wheel and Tire combinations available once the Safety Systems check out it’s time to program the mini key I look what I’m doing the keepy programming I really enjoy the job I have to be very careful watching what I’m doing checking the numbers for the right car finally after 1.7 km of assembly a new Mini is ready for the real world so we’re on the finishing line so this is basically the end of where everything’s finished this will then drive off around next door into validation ready to go to the customer it’s taken 5 and 1 half hours to build a new Mini the Quality Control process is extremely thorough but for some machines it’s even more intense [Music] once a day they pull a selected machine off the line for extended [Music] testing [Music] not all of our customers live in the ideal [Music] climate we have variations between whether or not you’re looking in specific areas or Asia areas where you’re talking about quite high humidity in certain areas which is high sunshine so this is our climate chamber we can go down to -3° C and up to plus 60 and we can do 98% humidity so we can really make it a very warm and humid atmosphere it’s very very unpas after a machine heats up and THS out it takes an extended bath in a water test Booth this is the water test R another area where where we torture our cars and really make sure that they’re tested to the absolute limits they run the water test for a day and a half and have the ability to turn the machine side to side and on an angle some people may have on their their homes they may have to part like that uh basically for the whole lifetime of the week after washing off each machine hits a few bumps we’re in the Shaker rig area this is the four po Shaker rig rig we’re just putting it through its Paces to understand if there’s any sweets and rattles on the car I think the challenging part is actually about trying to understand what the root cause of something is you can always hear a noise any customer Hears A noise in the car but trying to find out exactly what’s causing it is the main issue it’s always the most difficult thing to do diagnosing unwanted sounds is difficult but in Oxford the really hard times passed long ago I’ve been Oxford power for 15 years when I first started it’s probably about 50 40 cars a day now we’re making lots more cars the Oxford plant builds nearly 200,000 machines a year it’s a remarkable turnaround for a brand that was once on the ropes what minis do is they focus on sort of the lighter side of driving the more fun stuff the more not so serious stuff their designs aren’t cute they’re playful and that’s the way these cars drive the current topof the line machine is the JCW Edition the fastest coolest and costliest hot hatch the brand has ever built the John Cooper Works addition that we make at the plant here is is our super car it doesn’t come with a massive price tag with it but it’s so it’s a really exciting sporty car when you see the JCW badge on the back of a mini you know hey this is the one that’s sporty this is the one that’s fun to drive this is the one that hearkens back to those old cars JCW’s are fun to drive you get more power you get more Tire you get suspension that’s tuned to be more aggressive you get a little bit more excitement out of the stuff that I’m interested in the passion of driving the bw’s 228 horsepower engine thrusts the machine 0 to 100 kph in 6 seconds flat and offers a top speed of 246 kmph all for about 32,000 you think about the the British car industry everything that’s left is is kind of luxury cars and sports cars expensive stuff but the mini endured it was the odd one out right it was the different one kind of retain this pop culture status the great thing about mini all the minis and before you even get to the JCW package is they’re all like little go-karts they’ve got that really small glued to the ground super quick response just super Zippy it just goes right wherever you point it the Mini Cooper is democratized performance there’s no corner too tight for it and then you take a car that’s that good to begin with and then you add all the JCW goodies power bigger brakes better tires and STI suspension all these things and you can really carve a corner with those things the Mini starts thanks to a fuel shortage but quickly becomes an inexpensive form of sport where Smiles per Corner matter the most when the new Mini Cooper was Reborn the last decade it really did sneak up on a lot of people we said here’s this thing oh it’s it’s cute but a Cooper S drove like a little go-kart and you got the wheels pushed all the way out to the corners they’ve got a great stance to them low center of gravity they’re really Nimble really excellent little performance machines Min surprise people thanks to their affordable performance but they wow them due to their British sensibility as much as mini is a sporty little car it trades a lot on its uniqueness unique looks and it’s Unique Interior layout and the fact that it’s just it’s not like anything else you buy in that sort of price class it’s not another three box four-door sedan that everyone else has there’s two ways you could look at this car you could look at it as an inexpensive way to get in a BMW cuz there’s a lot of BMW attributes to this vehicle even though they’re kind of cleverly hidden you could also look at as a lifestyle Choice as a lifestyle vehicle something that’s exciting and interesting to drive something’s different than another vehicle 8 by for $30,000 the great thing about mini is that they kept the formula the cars have gotten a lot bigger they look a bit different they’ve got a lot more features and Technologies and things these days but they’ve always made them fun little go-kart to drive and the JCW’s are the best ones are those the modern mini a machine that only exists due to an oil crisis comes of age thanks to a Formula 1 racer and today offers a uniquely affordable blend of British fun and high-tech [Music] performance