Next MINI Cooper EV To Go R50 Retro and Rear Wheel Drive

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BMW development boss Joachim Post has confirmed to Autocar what MotoringFile has been circling for the better part of eighteen months: the next generation MINI Cooper EV is a genuine candidate for rear wheel drive. Asked directly about the possibility, Post didn’t deny it. He said BMW would choose “the optimum for the package” and that “sheer driving pleasure” is the priority for future models. For a brand that has been front driven since 1959, that’s about as close to a confirmation as a BMW executive gets before the decision is locked.

This isn’t coming out of nowhere. It’s the logical, if faster than expected, extension of a platform story we’ve been tracking since BMW’s Gen6 architecture first surfaced as a quantum leap for MINI in February 2025.

The current J01 MINI Cooper EV

All new BMW EV’s will use the Gen6 platform that offers either rear wheel drive or all wheel drive only.

Why BMW’s Gen6 Platform Is Forcing A Change

The mechanical reason is straightforward and one we’ve explained in detail before. BMW’s Gen6 electrically excited synchronous motor is packaged longitudinally at the rear axle with an integrated gearbox. There is no front-mounted equivalent in development. As we wrote when MINI’s big shift toward rear wheel drive first became clear, the Gen6 unit simply doesn’t bolt in sideways the way a transverse front-drive motor does. BMW Group engineers told Autocar at the Gen6 launch that there are no plans to build a front drive unit at all.

That constraint already settled the Countryman question. The next generation NB5 Countryman EV is confirmed for Neue Klasse and rear wheel drive dynamics, arriving around 2032 alongside an extended run of the petrol U25. What Autocar’s reporting adds is that the same architectural logic is now being applied to the Cooper, MINI’s flagship and the model with the most brand equity riding on getting it right.

The Front Wheel Drive Petrol Cooper Isn’t Going Anywhere

Whatever happens with the electric Cooper’s platform, front wheel drive petrol power isn’t leaving the MINI Cooper lineup. What’s genuinely unclear is what happens to the car underneath it once the F66 generation runs its course.

MotoringFile’s own reporting has the F66, alongside the F65 five-door and F67 convertible, confirmed in production through roughly 2032, with a 2027 mechanical update for EU7 compliance and an LCI now targeted for late 2027 or early 2028 shaped by customer feedback on the current car’s polarising interior. A second, lighter styling refresh follows around 2030. That’s a known, mapped-out lifecycle, and it’s a long one by MINI standards.

What isn’t known is whether MINI stretches the F66 generation further into the 2030s with additional revisions, or whether it retires the badge on schedule and replaces it outright. Hampf has already confirmed a next generation Cooper is officially in development for the early 2030s, with the platform still undecided at the time. Given Gen6 is an EV-specific architecture with no front-drive equivalent planned, whatever eventually replaces the F66 as the petrol Cooper cannot be Gen6-based by definition. Our reasonable assumption is that this points toward an evolved UKL derivative, similar to how the current FAAR platform grew out of UKL2, and that a change of that scale would come with a new internal code rather than another F66 refresh. BMW doesn’t typically carry a generation code across a full platform swap.

So the honest picture, and this is analysis rather than confirmed reporting, is two Coopers heading in genuinely different directions by the early-to-mid 2030s: an electric Cooper on a rear-drive Gen6 derivative wearing R50-inspired styling, and a petrol Cooper that eventually needs its own new designation once the F66 generation is spent, likely still front driven, still UKL-descended, and still filling the role the F66 fills today.

What This Means for the R50 Connection

The timing of this reporting lands close to a milestone we spent much of the spring covering. The R50 turned 25 this year, and Hampf’s comments to Autocar lean directly on that anniversary. He told the outlet that most people today don’t actually remember the original 1959 Mini, but they do remember one of BMW’s Minis from the past 25 years, the R50 chief among them. His intent, as he put it, is that he will “make sure to connect to this past.” For a design chief who has otherwise been guarded about specifics, that’s a fairly direct signal about where the next Cooper’s silhouette is headed.

There’s a mechanical irony worth sitting with here. The R50 was never rear wheel drive, but it also wasn’t built on a platform BMW controlled outright. It used the Tritec engine, a Chrysler-engineered iron block assembled in Brazil, sourced through non-BMW-standard suppliers because Rover’s involvement and the compressed development timeline left no better option. If the next Cooper does move to Gen6, it will be the most thoroughly BMW-engineered Cooper in the nameplate’s history, right down to the drive layout, while wearing R50-inspired styling. The brand is reaching backward for its silhouette at the exact moment it’s reaching forward for its engineering.

The Shrinking Question, Again

Hampf also used the interview to reopen a debate MotoringFile has tracked closely: whether MINI should build something smaller than the current Cooper. Asked specifically about 2011’s Rocketman concept, a three-door barely 3.4 metres long, he didn’t rule it out. He described the question of MINI growing smaller versus bigger as a conversation happening inside the company on a near-daily basis, while pointing to the Countryman as the release valve that already covers the brand’s larger-car use cases. That’s consistent with what he told Auto Express earlier this year, which we covered in our piece on Hampf and the future of the Rocketman, where a city-car-scale MINI was confirmed as still under active study rather than shelved.

He was careful to frame any shrinkage as constrained by reality rather than nostalgia. A modern Cooper still has to carry the crash structures, sensor packaging and driver-assistance hardware that regulators require today, none of which existed when the R50 or the Rocketman concept were conceived. Hampf’s own explanation for why the Cooper has grown with each generation puts the blame on those regulatory and ADAS requirements rather than on any drift in design ambition, a framing we found largely credible when he made a similar case in our feature on the Cooper’s design direction back in June. So the honest read is that a smaller Cooper remains a live internal debate, not a confirmed product, and any version of it would still be shaped by constraints the R50 never had to answer to.

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