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We learned last week at NAIAS that MINI’s F56 launch has been pushed back. Just how pushed back was a little unclear. At the time (as some of you may have heard in our interview with MINI USA Product Manager Pat McKenna) we heard that the F56 would simply launch this spring. I pushed Mr McKenna a bit and mentioned that spring is a long time – from March 21st to June 20th. He declined to give specifics but based on some readying between the lines it was pretty clear that the F56 initial production has been delayed likely until at least March. That would push the official dealer launches for Europe, the UK and parts of the US to April at the earliest.

Today we received confirmation of that timeframe.

According to sources MINI will be launching the F56 in Europe, the UK and the US in March and April respectively. Extrapolating a bit, we’d expect that’s mid/late March for the UK, early April for Europe and mid to late April for the US.

What about simply waiting for the 2015 model year? We’re told that that will start with July production this year potentially making the 2014 one of the more rare Hatchback models MINI has produced.

But there may be a reason to wait. As with most MINI and BMW model launches, there are some key options that come online a few months after initial production. In this case that was to be the JCW exterior package. With this delay we’d wager that we won’t see that as an option until summer at the earliest.

We’ll have much more on launch time-tables, price, performance and MPG later this week when MINI launches the car.