Magna International is negotiating with BMW to build a sport-utility-vehicle version of the MINI, industry sources in Europe said yesterday.

The vehicle is known internally as the Colorado and Magna’s Steyr plant in Graz, Austria, would assemble about 65,000 of the vehicles annually a source in Detroit said.

In addition, Magna Steyr is in the running to assemble a roadster for Volkswagen AG, which would add another 20,000 vehicles to production at Graz, the same Detroit source revealed.

This news comes Today from the Canadian Globe and Mail publication, and ties in with our report from February that the MINI 4×4 could be built in Austria. Whether or not the sources quoted are reliable and hold any genuinely new information is anyone’s guess.