Luxury Lifestyle, Design & Architecture blog

MINI rolled out a brand new generation of its Cooper hatchback at its plant in Oxford on Monday but just a day later the car was being presented at events taking place in Los Angeles, Tokyo, Shanghai and London. Here are some live photos and a video taken at the separate reveals. The car’s reveal on Monday actually coincided with the 107th anniversary of the birth of Sir Alec Issigonis, the designer of the original Mini. He’s shown briefly in the video above working on the original Mini of the 1960s. The latest Cooper was designed together with BMW, the parent company of the modern MINI brand, and is bigger, more fuel efficient and more refined than the model it replaces. It rides on a new platform dubbed “UKL” which will eventually underpin a handful of new models from MINI as well as some from BMW. Other MINIs the UKL platform is set to spawn will include a new five-door Cooper as well as replacements for the Cooper Convertible, Cooper Clubman and Cooper Countryman. ...

If the French luxury goods maker LV ever got into the business of making cars, this image tells you what should expect. CoverEFX from Erftstadt Fahrzeugfolierer is a German tuning company that came up with this mind-blogging rendering by bringing together black leather look with gold metallic look on this Mini Cooper.  The all-in-leather car has gold imprints glued individually by hand to vividly bring out the signature Louis Vuitton feel with the foil embossing technique. The folks here have no stone unturned with respect to the detailing here. The wheel and tires don OZ LM rims in matte black and matte gold metallic that go in sync with the gold imprints. Coming to the technical specs we have engine benefits of the 211 series hp / 280 Nm in two stages: in stage 1 with software optimization, a 2.5 “Milltek exhaust system with downpipe. There is also a sports catalyst here with a larger L-sports charge air filter 236 HP for your much needed dose of that adrenaline r...