More than just a car, the Mini is the most fun-filled and spectacularly successful British car ever built
- and now it's back with a new design for the 21st century. `The Mini: the Making of a Modern Icon' celebrates 50 momentous years of a British design classic, and looks to the future with a special section on the relaunched Mini.

`The Mini' tells the complete story of this most legendary of cars: the unlikely genius who designed it; the Goon who first made it popular; the Lords and Ladies, call-girls and rock stars, swingers and hippies who drove it - at the same time taking a revealing look at Britain's last half century.

Not surprisingly, the car that set London swinging and at the same time wowed the rally driving circuit, attracted a legion of famous fans from the entertainment and motor racing worlds - and the book features numerous original photographs and interviews with people such as Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Sterling Moss, Jamie Blandford, Jeremy Clarkson, Damon Hill, Britt Ekland, Twiggy, John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

But behind the glitz and glamour of the Mini as an icon was the struggle to make money and a sad decline that exemplified the British motor industry. The book examines the troubled history of the company that made it, the struggles between workers and management, and their role in the decline of the original Mini - and now the miraculous rebirth of an all-new Mini.