You can keep all your Mini heritage, it was good in the day though not special. Marketed by Twiggy in a short skirt it simply happened to alleviate catching the Bus or Train to work and you could park it in small London Streets, other than that it was poorly put together, noisy, unreliable and cramped. The only reason it manifested itself in the hearts of Us British is it’s appearance in the Italian Job but then it was driven by driver and passenger only (no one in the back) and even then the amount of work they had to put into the cars to keep them going almost rebuilt them replacing everything that would break. Yes it was the 60’s, but we were building Jets and sending Rockets to the moon.
I have a mate at the Club who has two, both Coopers, they look nice yes but rattle like a bag of spanners.
Not a fan of the new ones either, BMW would have been better off badging them as Beemers and that be the end of it though then they couldn’t sell em to the Japanese who for some very odd reason seem to have a bit of a thing for our British Heritage.
Simple, but effective, Marketing.