There’s has been lots of speculation recently in the press on both when the next generation MINI will be debut and when it will launch to the public. While we don’t have definitive information regarding either, we do now have some pretty strong clues.

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MINI UK sent its dealers a bulletin yesterday that explained what lies ahead for the debut and release of the next generation MINI. The bulletin didn’t specify an exact launch date but it did mention that (UK) dealers will be taken on a European driving experience for the launch of the new car in October of 2006. Further it said that dealers should be prepared to invite customers to the British International Motor Show in London between the 20th and the 30th of July. While they weren’t clear on what exactly the reasoning for this invite would be, it would make sense in terms of scheduling to see the public debut of the new MINI around that time period. Granted we still expect BMW to release images and information on the new MINI through their press site before the car is publicly shown.

So what can we take away from this? I would guess that we’ll see images and information released to the press in late spring or early summer and then the public debut of the 2007 MINI at the British Motor Show in late July. After that I’d guess that full scale production would probably start around September to October with customer cars being delivered in late October to November.

We should have more information soon on specific model rollouts.