The Next MINI EV May be Rear Wheel Drive – Shockingly It’s Not the First Time

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The next MINI Cooper EV’s likely move to rear-wheel drive isn’t the clean break it looks like. MINI tried something close to it before, in the mid-1990s, years before the R50 that everyone now points to as the brand’s spiritual reset.

BMW’s Gen6 means a rear wheel drive MINI could be a real thing

We reported last month that the next Cooper is being sketched with R50-inspired proportions while BMW engineers weigh a shift to the Gen6 electric platform, the same architecture underpinning the iX3 and the upcoming i3 saloon. The detail that matters is mechanical, not stylistic. BMW engineers have told Autocar there are no plans to develop a viable front-drive motor unit for Gen6, which leaves MINI with a blunt choice: adopt rear drive on the next electric Cooper, or stay off the platform entirely. BMW development boss Joachim Post has framed it as an open option rather than a settled decision, with driving feel as the stated priority.

Nothing here is confirmed. As we noted in our own coverage, this is sourced direction, not a locked product decision, and the current Cooper remains front-driven regardless of what comes next.

MIN created not one but two completely different rear wheel drive concepts that eventually lost out the front wheel drive R50

MINI’s almost gone rear wheel drive before

Long before Gen6, MINI’s design teams argued this exact question out. We told the story in detail here: in the run-up to the R50, BMW pitted several teams against each other in a design shootout that would culminate in the brand’s rebirth. The Rover’s design studio produced the Spiritual, a radical proposal that packaged a flat three-cylinder engine under the rear seats, driving the rear wheels. In Munich, BMW’s teams were split into two, with Adrian van Hooydonk (now head of all BMW Group Design) leading the design of the ACV 30, another mid-engined rear-wheel-drive concept. The third was led by American Frank Stephenson, who created the winning concept, a front-wheel-drive, front-engined concept that eventually became the R50.  

That the rear-drive idea existed at all, thirty years before Gen6 made it commercially plausible, is the part worth sitting with. MINI’s design language has spent the current generation pointing backward at the R50. The mechanical layout underneath the next Cooper may end up pointing further back still, to the cars the R50 beat.

The MINI ACV 30 Concept was rear wheel drive and mid-engined in an effort to improve packaging and performance.

The parallel has a limit

It is worth being precise about what actually matches. Both the Spiritual and ACV 30 put a combustion engine behind the seats, ahead of the rear axle, in a genuine mid-engine layout. Gen6, by contrast, is an EV platform with a motor mounted at the rear axle and a battery slung low under the floor. There is no engine block to relocate, so calling a Gen6 Cooper mid-engined depends on how you look at the definition. But what carries over is the underlying logic, not the hardware: freeing the nose from drivetrain duty to improve packaging and handling balance, which is the same problem the Spiritual’s designers were solving with 1994’s tools.

What about the petrol Cooper?

Based on sources, it would appear that MINI will once again heavily refresh the current petrol Cooper to create a new variant based on its mechanicals. That would mean we’ll continue to have a front-engined, front-wheel-drive Cooper in the spirit of the original. For those counting, that would mean the next petrol MINI would be heavily based on an almost 20-year-old platform and likely the B48 engine family dating to the same period.  Meanwhile, the company would have a rear-drive electric Cooper (based on BMW’s Gen6 platform) sitting next to it in showrooms. It’s a fascinating combination and one that oddly, makes a bit more sense to us on paper in that both are allowing the logic of the drivetrain technology to lead the layout. 

Of course, nothing has been confirmed at this point, so things may still change. Which means you’ll want to check MotoringFile for further updates as they come.

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