Rover's new owners BMW have declined to discuss the precise shape of the car, which will be known simply as The Mini, although they say it will be heavily influenced by Issigonis. But they are much more open about their intention to sell the car as a fashion accessory.

Customers will be ushered into Italian-style café/boutiques where they will be encouraged to buy "The Mini" clothes and "The Mini" extras such as wheel trims and leather seats to go with their car. "We're a couple of years away from this yet," a spokesman said. "But when you have a new product, you have a good opportunity to introduce a new approach.

"The idea is that you don't just go to buy a car. What you get is a cosmopolitan café involvement. You generate a community that is welcoming, an environment where there is also this opportunity to buy a car."

The sales cafés will be based in Rover dealerships in this country but in America and Germany they will be part of BMW showrooms. In a further attempt to distance the car from the strike-bedevilled image of the British motoring industry, and in particular Longbridge, the car will not be called a Rover, it will simply be "The Mini".

The decision to build the new Mini at Longbridge safeguards the plant's 15,000 jobs. The car will continue to have the trademark transverse engine and front-wheel drive. It is thought to be a smaller version of the popular MPV people-carriers and based on a scribbled design for a new Mini produced by Issigonis 25 years ago.

Production is not expected to start until the turn of the millennium with Rover aiming to have 100,000 rolling off the Longbridge production lines every year. At the height of its fame, as many as 350,000 Minis were being produced a year. Annual production is now down to about 20,000 but total sales have passed 5,350,000 and it is expected to continue in production until the new car is unveiled.