The iconic British vehicle began production ten years ago following a successful relaunch and a large amount of public anticipation.

Over 1.5 million cars have been exported by Mini, owned by BMW, while the company’s latest expansion plans to cater for the latest generation of the vehicles takes it total UK investment to £1.5 billion.

“The two millionth Mini to be made here in Oxford is a fantastic symbol of the UK’s strength in the global automotive industry,” said the prime minister, adding that the car represents a great British manufacturing success story.

Frank-Peter Arndt, BMW board member responsible for production, added: “The most essential factors in the success of Mini are the skills, passion and dedication of our associates.”

In a novel approach to its tenth anniversary, the brand launched a special site, Mini Lunatics, where enthusiastic owners can enter their car details and enjoy a virtual tour of space based on their mileage. Prizes are also being offered, including a trip to Cape Canaveral.

“The Mini, inspired by Goodwood is a limited edition model that will combine typical Mini driving fun with discerning craftsmanship,” said Darren Richie, Irvine, Calif., Mini’s General Manager. “We’re excited for its arrival to the U.S and we’re excited to see our Mini fans reactions,” he said. The Mini, which will be produced in a limited edition of 1,000 units, combines typical Mini driving fun with discerning craftsmanship, select materials and a styling marked by typical British understatement of the world’s leading producer of luxury automobiles. Deliveries of the 2012 model year vehicle, which will launch as part of the exclusive product line, are scheduled to start in spring 2012. The Mini is characterized by top-grade materials, the highest level of workmanship and stylish supremacy.

The special edition of the Goodwood Mini Hardtop was built under the guidance of the Rolls-Royce Motor Cars designer team and transfers the unmistakable style of the British luxury car manufacturer to the equally unique MINI, an original within the premium small car segment. Visit any local Mini’s showrooms knowledgeable staff, expert factory-trained technicians, state-of-the-art service department, comprehensive parts department and one of the nation’s largest selections of new, used and certified pre-owned Mini’s.

There’s still hope though, as MINI recently announced a big investment plan in its plant in Oxford, UK to prepare for production of its third-generation Cooper model, a test mule of which was recently spotted while undergoing road trials. The new model, will be based on a new front-wheel drive platform dubbed UKL, which will be used by BMW for its own range of entry-level hatchbacks.

A new Cooper isn’t the only kind of ammo that MINI has ready to load, as the company boss Norbert Reithoffer has revealed to What Car? that a 10 model lineup is coming. The current lineup consists of the regular hatchback (with various Cooper and JCW variants), MINI Cabrio, MINI Clubman, MINI Countryman, plus the upcoming MINI Coupe and MINI Roadster, the former coming to Frankfurt in September and the latter expected early next year.

There’s also the Paceman concept (a coupe crossover) to consider, and the Rocketman looks set to go into production. That brings the grand total to eight, and the MINI E could be the ninth car offered by the British Brand.

Your guess is as good as ours when it comes to the tenth model, but we hope it’s something like a proper sportscar or a rally-bread thoroughbred.

The news followed an announcement on Wednesday by Nissan that it was investing £192m to build the next version of its Qashqai model in Britain. Both announcements safeguard thousands of jobs.

Business leaders, unions and the government welcomed the development, which the Prime Minister said was a “tremendous vote of confidence” in BMW’s UK workforce. The Mini coupe will be launched later this year and the Mini Roadster in 2012, both produced in Oxford, where more than two million Minis have been built since 2001 – three-quarters of them for export.

BMW’s latest investment will also benefit a pressings plant in Swindon and its engine plant at Hams Hall near Birmingham. The company said it had invested £1.5 billion in the UK since 2000. BMW group chairman Norbert Reithofer said: “This investment underlines that the UK will remain the heart of Mini production.”

The announcements by BMW and Nissan signal a renewed confidence in the UK motor industry, which produces the country’s most valuable manufactured exports, with £27bn worth of vehicles and parts going overseas in 2010. BMW’s £2.4 billion-a-year exports of cars and engines account for about 1 per cent of all goods exported by UK companies.

Paul Everitt, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), said competition to secure work on new models was always fierce. “What they’ve committed to is the next generation of vehicles for the Mini and the Qashqai which effectively will guarantee these plants for another decade,” he said. “Everybody wants this investment. Every country in Europe and developing parts of the world wants investment from major automotive manufacturers because it means high value, good quality jobs over a long period of time. Every time there is a new model in the offing the competition is intense.”

Recent years have been tough for car makers in Britain, with the number of new cars sold falling for 11 consecutive months to May. But things seem to have taken a turn for the better with General Motors making their new van in Luton, and Ford committing to investing £1.5bn in research and development in Britain. Everitt added: “What we are seeing is a re-commitment by major vehicle manufacturers to their production facilities in the UK.

“If you’re one of the tens of thousands of people working in this business today you will feel an awful lot more confident about your future than you did yesterday or the day before.” Everitt said he was “optimistic” about the future for car makers in the UK, and that the demise of British-owned firms was irrelevant.

“The UK is a major part of the global automotive industry. I don’t see the manufacturers who operate here as being anything other than part of the UK economy. So I’m not sure that this whole question of ownership is a relevant one,” he said. “All these manufacturers are multi-national, the most important thing for us is that they feel happy and confident to invest in the UK.”

The special edition cars will go into production in 2010 as 2011 model year cars. It has not been decided yet whether the cars will be available in the United States. If they are made available to U.S. customers, they’ll be in extremely limited numbers, said Mini spokeswoman Nathalie Bauters.

“It’s going to be for Mini fanatics and those who want something really special from Mini,” she said.

The cars’ bodies will be no different from those of other Mini Coopers, but they will be coated in a special paint, the color of which has also not been decided, Bauters said.

The cars will be built at the Mini factory in Oxford, said Bauters. It has not yet been decided if the cars will brought to Rolls-Royce’s factory for final outfitting with special high-end interior trim and other luxury touches or if the the Rolls-Royce produced luxury materials will be added to the cars on the Mini assembly line.

Mini announced in May that it was considering a high-end special edition car. Up to now, Mini had not officially confirmed production of a Rolls-Royce edition.

MG Rover watchers are said to be angry at the extent to which the Phoenix Four benefited personally while overseeing the demise of Britain’s last volume car manufacturer. They believe the report, compiled after a four-year investigation by two government inspectors, has opened the door to civil action.

“Company law on fiduciary responsibility is complex and unclear,” said Nick Matthews, an academic at Coventry University and car industry analyst for 15 years. “The inspectors agree that it is uncertain, particularly in respect of the deal to buy MGR Capital. What they have said is that the only way to establish for sure whether laws have been broken is through the courts.”

The inspectors devoted 100 pages of their 850-page report to the Phoenix Four’s investment in MGR Capital. This was the car finance joint venture with a subsidiary of the banking group HBOS, now part of Lloyds TSB, that bought the Rover cars finance and lease loan book from BMW for £313m in 2001.

However, the interest in MGR Capital was acquired independently of Phoenix Venture Holdings, the businessmen’s master company, which owned MG Rover. Their involvement in MGR came through the Phoenix Partnership, a private vehicle for the four and Kevin Howe, the man they brought in to run the car company.

The inspectors drew attention to the complex boardroom paperwork that accompanied the transaction and pointed out that company law is uncertain. “The points should rather, it seems to us, be aired if and so far as necessary in court proceedings with full legal argument,” they said.

Union leaders said it was not clear if they would lead a civil action, admitting there was unlikely to be much appetite – or funding – for ex-workers to bring a case themselves.

Richard Burden, Labour MP for Birmingham Northfield, said that it was “unacceptable” if , as the report claimed, the Phoenix Four had misled him and his constituents.

“The report makes the charge that when I and others raised questions about the structure of the company and the remuneration of the directors, at least some of the responses we received were misleading. If true, this is very serious. Not only will they have misled me as the local MP, they will also have misled my constituents and their own employees. That is unacceptable.

“The report also alleges that one of the Phoenix Four gave misleading answers to a committee of the House of Commons of which I was a member. If this is true, the directors must answer to that.”

It was on August 26, 1959, when ice-cream colored Ford Zodiacs with fluted chrome still wafted along dual-carriageways, that the Mini 1.0 appeared. As a small boy my father took me to see one of the first at the Rocket Garage in Liverpool.

What was obvious even — perhaps specially — to a child was ingenuity of a high order. Alec Issigonis’s insistence on compactness and his refusal of “style” produced the most unusual and influential car ever. But Issigonis had a demanding personality: he insisted, for example, that discomfort kept drivers helpfully alert.

Still, like all great art, the Mini defined, in fact predicated, the mood of an era. Remember: the car arrived before the skirt.

Woefully inept management did not realize that the Mini was manufactured at a loss until the Seventies — by which time rights to the name were owned by the industrial calamity that was British Leyland. BMW bought the remains of BL in 1994. It was an act of opportunistic gallantry. The chairman of the Bavarian company at that time was a relation of Issigonis; he did not want scruffy factories, gormless executives and a truculent workforce: he wanted access to the Britishness of Austin-Healey, MG and Riley. But most of all, Mini.

The Mini 2.0 appeared in 2001. Sales-wise, it was a clever way to extend BMW’s product-line without damage to a premium reputation. Art-wise, it was more clever still. Line-up Mini 2.0 against Mini 1.0 and you will see no true similarity; the new car is much larger, heavier, self-consciously cute. So in a sense, it is a travesty of Issigonis’s minimalist vision. The Audi designer Walter de’Silva damned it as “repetition”.

And, it seems, this — combined with the delicious sense of a quality toy — is exactly what consumers want. The success of the Mini 2.0 (and now Mini 2.1 and so on) has delighted and baffled by turns. It proves that car design is a matter of nuance and evocation. The Mini pillages and plays with collective consciousness: the design is of a fantasy, not of a machine. It is an idea, not an invention.

Failure, they say, is a bastard while success has many fathers. There are several claims to Mini 2.0 paternity, but that wonderful shape was the responsibility of Frank Stephenson, a 49-year-old American. Stephenson soon moved on to Ferrari and then McLaren, companies with interesting back catalogs of their own.

Is the future to redesign the past ? The Mini tells us yes.

Inspired by John Cooper’s son Mike who was heavily consulted during development, the vehicle will be adorned with the British racing green of days gone by. According to the BMW press release, the car will be powered by a “155 kW/211 hp four-cylinder engine with Twin-Scroll turbocharger and petrol direct injection. The production version of the MINI John Cooper Works World Championship 50 features numerous exterior and interior details reflecting the racing pedigree of the brand.

Ensuring both an optimal view and a striking look are bi-xenon headlights with black interior surfaces and additional driving lights with black housings. The MINI John Cooper Works World Championship 50 also features a plethora of carbon fiber features, among them the bonnet scoop on the bonnet, rear diffuser, exterior mirror caps and tailgate handle. These provide the link to the modern racing era. Special numbering on the side scuttles finishers identifies each MINI John Cooper Works World Championship 50 as an individual entity of an exclusive limited series.”

Considerable work has gone into the whole package, the 1.6-litre four-cylinder unit is based on the engine of the MINI John Cooper Works CHALLENGE that was first intorduced in the 2008 MINI CHALLENGE. The 211 horsepower is mated to a six-speed, manual gearbox. All this enables the MINI John Cooper Works World Championship 50 to accelerate from standstill to 100 km/h in just 6.5 seconds, going on to a top speed of 238 km/h. Average consumption in the EU test cycle is 6.9 liters per 100 kilometers, with a CO2 figure of just 165 grams per kilometer.

It is a fabulous looking machine and according to MINI the car also includes electromechanical power steering (EPS) which helps guarantee safe and extremely precise handling. A Sport button on the centre console activates a more dynamic setting with sharper even steering response and enhanced precision. By depressing the button you will switch the accelerator pedal control map to an even sportier mode.

Large sports brake system with red aluminum calipers guarantee short stopping distances both on the road and track. Standard equipment also features Dynamic Stability Control (DSC) including Hill Assist, Dynamic Traction Control (DTC) and Brake Assist. With DTC switched off, furthermore, an Electronic Differential Lock Control system (also fitted as standard) is activated for the drive axle, supporting more dynamic driving when accelerating out of corners. The Works World Champion 50 will be the ultimate MINI for the lucky 250 able to afford one.

They would also like to thank MINI of Nashville for partnering with them in the creation and promotion of this exhibit. In addition to the exhibit, their support will allow the museum to host a special celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Mini in late August. According to the museum, a specific date along with more details will be available soon.

More information about the contents of the exhibit is available now online at the Lane Motor Museum’s Mini site.