Detroit Auto Show: 2012 MINI Roadster Debuts, Looking Better Without Roof

The 2012 MINI Roadster, the first two-seater cabriolet in the company's history, has made its first public appearance at the Detroit Auto Show. When it joins the MINI range in 2012, the Roadster will be the sixth model to wear the famous badge, tasked with stealing sales away from the Mazda MX-5 and the Citroen DS3 cabriolet. Naturally, the Roadster could cannibalise the sales of the four-seater MINI Cabriolet, which comes with an electrically-operated fabric roof compared with the Roadster's manually-operated roof of the same material.

Visually, the Roadster is unmistakably MINI, and it is not hard to observe that the chopping off of the MINI Coupe's “helmet” roof has created a small cabriolet that looks really neat. The circular-theme cabin is instantly familiar as that of a MINI's as well. The familiarity extends to underneath the skin, too, as the Roadster shares the same platform as the rest of the MINI range, along with three versions of MINI's 1.6-litre four-cylinder engine: 122 horses in the Cooper, 184 horses in the Cooper S and 211 horses in the John Cooper Works. Enjoy the 2012 MINI Roadster live photo gallery below!

AboutSeow Yaohan

Seow Yao Han strives to bring you the latest and the most comprehensive information on cars available in Malaysia. But it's never easy for him to talk and write cars in this part of the world because what you lust after is often not what you drive home. When the euphoria of test-driving that branded, super-expensive sports car dies down, he just goes home in his less-than-glamorous ride.