You'll be looking at the next generation Mini Cooper in showrooms in a couple of years from now. So... what will you see? Based on what we've seen in the past, the next generation Mini will likely feature some new sheet metal, a revised interior and, of course, bigger and more efficient engines. This is what AutoCar is expecting:

According to the word on the street, the front end of the 2011 Mini Cooper will be much different from the current model. You'll be greeted by much more "aggressive" headlamps and a new nose design with an even shorter hood, encased in a redesigned front bumper. The beltline of the future Cooper will be raised (in the current auto-styling fashion) and the taillights will become trapezoidal in shape. Depending upon your own personal aesthetic,  the car will either have a much more dynamic coupe-like appearance or it will lose much of the panache that makes the current design so loveable. Basically, it sounds like they want to take some of the "cute" out of the car and make it more "serious" and "aggressive", so use that phrase again.

The latest spy shots are evidently showing a larger grille and a wider air dam, from which we could logically extrapolate that the 2011 car could have one of BMW’s Valvetronic engines under the hood. That's not a huge leap of imagination, but it  would make for a  more spirited drive out of the showroom in 2011.