It is very appropriate that for its latest Mini design incarnation that the brand has decided to hark back to its historic roots to invoke a car which was probably one of the most historically important motor cars of all time — the Austin 7.

Declan Colley looks back on the automotive year that was 2016 and picks out the best wheels he has driven in the last 12 months — some of his selections may well surprise you.

The biggest and most versatile Mini to be launched in the brand’s 57-year history is set to arrive in Ireland early next year.

My mum, bless her, is 94 and long past caring how old people think — or know — her to be. A bit dodgy on the legs these days and macularly degenerated to the point she can no longer do her beloved crosswords or even read the paper, she’s still as lively as a bag of ferrets.

I REMEMBER a time many, many moons ago when, early every Saturday, my Dad would gather myself and a gang of my mates — usually about 12 or 14 of us — pack us all into the back of a Mini Traveller which was in the family at the time and take us to soccer practice.

Among all the models in the increasingly diversified Mini range, the original Clubman was perhaps the weirdest of the lot. With its idiosyncratic door layout — two front, one rear, and two back — the Clubman was not your normal run-of-the-mill family car choice.

Fans of bonkers motoring — myself included, it has to be said — like it hot. The really blistering motors truly are those which get the adrenaline flowing simply by looking at them — the really good stuff follows when you get to crank them up.

Another chapter has opened in the regeneration of the Mini model family, with the debut this week of the new Mini Clubman.

The new Mini John Cooper Works has been launched here and highlights of the car include a two litre TwinPower Turbo engine which develops 231 bhp and 320 Nm. It will be priced from €36,180.

John Lancaster tells the Irish Examiner about his Mini Cabriolet and how it was love at first sight.

SOME time ago I asserted that there were nearly as many Mini variants than there were rabbits on the back beach at Barleycove in West Cork.

BY my reckoning there are now about 5,436 variants of the Mini on sale here — from the One, to the Cooper and Cooper S, Countryman, Clubman, Hatchback, Convertible, Coupe and Roadster and all the variants thereof. Ok, so I might just be exaggerating with regard to the 5,436, but the numbers of them appear to be multiplying quicker than the rabbit colony at the back of Barleycove beach.

THE joys attached to this job are many and varied: driving nice new cars every week, the occasional opportunity to travel to faraway places to drive them and the sheer thrill of being allowed to drive things which you know few, if any, of your contemporaries will