Autoblog

Mini Cooper D. Click image for photo gallery.

Come August, the European MINI range will undergo a revamp that results in fuel economy and emissions improvements across the board. The most impressive numbers come from the Cooper D (for diesel), which as you know is unavailable here. We'll use the car's US mpg measurements for the sake of discussion (the press info after the jump uses measurements based on the larger Imperial gallon). The current Cooper D gets 53.4mpg as is, but after the changes it'll jump to a tick over 60 mpg. At the same time, its CO² emissions will drop from 118g/km to 104g/km.

As you'll see after the jump, every car makes, including the Cooper S, whose combined-cycle fuel economy will rise to almost 38 mpg. The regular MINI Cooper will go 43 miles on a single gallon, and the Europe-only MINI One will do slightly better, getting 44 and change. MINI pulls this off by incorporating regenerative braking, a driver-defeatable stop/start system on manual-transmission-equipped cars, and by adding a shift indicator that tells the driver what gear to select to ensure that maximum efficiency is being achieved. We see no reason why these changes couldn't be incorporated on the USDM Cooper and Cooper S, and hope that 's part of the plan. Next step: work on getting that Cooper D over here, okay? We want that.

Full PR with before-and-after numbers is pasted after the jump. You can use TDIClub's conversion calc to translate the Imperial measurements to our own.

[Source: MINI via AutoblogGreen]