Why did the elephant cross the road and meet the MINI? Well, because the BMW Group has decided it’s time the British brand expanded its wings and fly over to India where production of the firm’s cars will begin later this year at the BMW plant in Chennai.
Jokes aside, this is the first time that modern MINIs will be made outside of Europe (unlike the normal MINI range, the Countryman crossover is not manufactured in Oxford, UK, but in Graz, Austria by Magna Steyr) since the German carmaker re-launched the brand in 2001. Keep in mind that the original MINI was produced in several locations around the world.
The BMW Group said it decided to extend its international production network for MINI as a response to “increasing worldwide demand” for the British firm’s cars. MINI opened its first five showrooms in India in the beginning of 2012 selling 302 cars between March and December of last year. The German group stated that it is expecting “the Indian car market as a whole to experience high growth rates over the medium and long term”.
The first MINI models to roll off the production line at the Chennai factory, which currently assembles the BMW 3 Series, 5-Series, X1 and X3 models, will be the diesel-powered Cooper D Countryman and the petrol-engine One Countryman crossovers.
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