U.S. Premiere for MINI's $52,000 Goodwood Edition and Coupe Model at Pebble Beach

This week's Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in California is gearing up to be an important event for car enthusiasts as a respectable number of automakers are planning to use the show to unveil their latest products.

While the BMW Group's MINI division won't have anything we haven’t seen before, nevertheless, it will use the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance to hold the U.S. debut of the "Mini Inspired by Goodwood" and the all-new Coupe.

The special edition "Mini Inspired by Goodwood", which is in fact inspired by Rolls-Royce, will carry a base price of $52,000 (including $700 D&H), when advanced orders begin later this month.

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This MINI Hides a 5-Foot Snake Under its Hood

It's the last thing you want to find hiding or crawling under the bonnet of your car: a slippery, five-foot long Boa constrictor. But that's exactly what happened to Wayne Hunt, a technician carrying out an MOT on a MINI Cooper at the Bosch Car Service garage in Carringtons of Oxford, UK.

Wayne said that he pushed his hand under the hood to find the safety release catch but "felt something that seemed rather out of place", which turned out to be a five-foot long, five-inch thick snake (raise your hand if you just thought about "that's what she said" joke).

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BMW Group Publishes Results of first Mini E Trial Project

We all know about the merits of electric vehicles but have you ever wondered how it would really be like owning one and driving it on a daily basis?

In collaboration with the British government, the BMW Group launched a trial program in the UK with 40 pure-electric MINI E cars given to 62 citizens and 72 pool users over two six-month periods, from December 2009 until March 2011.

Now that the trial period is over, MINI and the Oxford Brookes University, which undertook the research, have released their findings.

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MINI UK Launches New Soho Editions for Hatch and Convertible

Following the release of the MINI Clubman Soho edition last year, the British automaker decided to name all of its special edition models after London boroughs, districts, streets and landmarks.

As a result, the Soho nameplate has now been applied to the three-door hatchback and soft-top convertible model, both of which will be available in the United Kingdom in Cooper and Cooper D models from now until March 2012.

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CoverEFX Revisits MINI Cooper S R53

The second generation of the new MINI from the BMW Group has been with us since 2007 but the tuning industry has yet to let go of the Mk1 hatch and especially the Cooper S model with the R53 designation.

German tuning house CoverEFX has just launched a new package for the MINI Cooper S Mk1 that includes both cosmetic and performance modifications.

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