F56 MINI Cooper SE production Extended for North America

The F56 MINI Cooper SE production ended last year with one important exception – those destined for North America. Why? Due to global politics the US and Canada won’t see the all new all new J01 MINI Cooper EV for quite some time. That has left MINI USA and MINI of Canada in a bind with only one solution – build more of the F56 Cooper SE.
MINI is solving this issue in two ways. For one they’re introducing the electric MINI Countryman to the North American market to help satisfy the EV need. Second MINI is extending production of the F56 MINI Cooper SE for an extra month. That means there should be a good supply for the first six months of 2024 at MINI dealers in the US and Canada. However that doesn’t mean the car will be around forever. Given the popularity of the model, we’d expect them to become relatively scarce by the 3rd quarter of the year. And once they’re gone there will not be another electric MINI Cooper in North American for quite some time.
While Europe, the UK, Asia and South American will get the J01, MINI’s new electric Cooper won’t be available from MINI USA for years. While it’s not official, it’s all but certain that MINI USA won’t be importing the new J01 electric Cooper until it expands from its initial Chinese production to MINI’s Oxford Plant in the UK later this decade. That means we won’t see that car on US shores until likely 2027. So if you want a small electric MINI, there’s only one options for the next 3+ years. Suddenly a 3 year lease starts to make a lot of sense.
9 Comments
But… What are the global politics mentioned in the article that are affecting the J01 with such a late North American launch? 3 years is quite a while.
We’ve written about it so often we forgot to go into details. But <a href="https://www.motoringfile.com/2023/09/11/electric-mini-cooper-production-coming-to-the-uk-us-imports/" rel="ugc">here they are</a>.
All good! I appreciate the link, so thank you! I’m newer to the site.
No worries! There’s a lot of info in the sections at the top of the site and all are organized by generation and model. But if you have questions the moderators or other readers will be happy to answer.
Interesting. When would be the latest possible to special order?
Unfortunately it was in early December.
Bummer. Would be nice if they could figure out how to be more transparent. MINI USA failed to say anything like that, or about this, when I reached out to them. They seem to have lost that customer service touch and have forgotten how to communicate with their customers well. Disappointing.
In my experience it’s really down the dealers because each one has their own specific allotment that would change the last order dates. All that said there’s an outside chance that there’s one still that could be edited before heading into production.
I appreciate the suggestion. Thank you.