Mini has priced the 2012 Mini Inspired by Goodwood (full details here) in the U.K. For those in need of a refresher, it’s a Cooper S completely worked over by none other than fellow BMW Grouper Rolls-Royce; it walked the catwalk at this year’s Shanghai auto show. And, uh, it will be expensive. How expensive? Well, before we tell you, allow us to state that a standard Mini Cooper S costs £18,015 in Britain—$28,849 at current exchange rates. Here’s what the Goodwood Mini offers above and beyond that model: an interior and exterior pored over by Rolls designers, who trimmed the cabin with the finest leathers, wood, and polished metal, and who subtly classed up the outside with a monochromatic treatment punctuated by chrome detailing.
For this Roller massage, Mini is asking £41,000—and there’s no need to grab a calculators to understand how expensive that is. The Goodwood’s price is more than double that of the car on which it’s based. At current exchange rates the Goodwood doesn’t quite “ring in” so much as it “thud in” at a whopping $65,657. Of course, when they sell a few of these little buggers over here, it’s more likely that the price in dollars will look something like the one in pounds sterling: We figure $40K to $45K is a good rough estimate.
It might help to think of the Mini Goodwood as something of a tiny Rolls-Royce, which would make it the least expensive new Roller available. Furthermore, the Goodwood Mini’s single competitor, the Aston Martin Cygnet, costs £30,995 in the U.K., some triple the £9995 required for the Toyota iQ which serves as that model’s roots. Thus, the Mini’s luxury-version-to-cheap-version price ratio is a more-favorable 2.28:1 versus the Cygnet’s 3.10:1, making it a something of a value in the highly competitive tiny, sybaritic hatchback class. Mini will only produce 1000 of the Goodwood Minis, and British customers can place orders for one starting today.
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