BMW has drafted in an extra shift at its Oxford factory to increase production of the new Mini.

So far the new model, which went on sale in Britain in July and in early September in the rest of Europe, has clocked up sales of 10,000.

With the car due to be launched in Japan and the US next spring and with additional models including the Mini Cooper S due to come into production, BMW is stepping up output.

It aims to manufacture some 30,000 vehicles by the end of this year and 100,000 in 2002. Since last weekend the Oxford plant has been running two shifts a day between Monday and Thursday and has added a third on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

An additional 500 employees have been recruited, taking the workforce to 4,000.

Finding the extra labour was not a problem, according to a BMW spokeswoman. "It was surprisingly easy, not what we expected. These are unusual working hours which have proved very popular.

"It's three shifts instead of four and it has proved popular with people who can't get to work during the rest of the week; people who have children to look after- even some students apparently."

Yesterday BMW announced better than expected pretax profits for the third quarter of €567m (£350m). That was slightly down on last year but well ahead of the average the market had been expecting.

Despite the costs of launching the Mini and the new 7 series, BMW said that it was on course for a 6% return on sales for the year. It is predicting sales of around 900,000 vehicles - up by some 10% on 2000.

Though the motor industry has been hit by a number of profits warnings since the September 11 attacks, BMW said that its focus on premium brands was helping it absorb the impact. "The economic effects of the terror attacks in the US are manageable on the basis of available information," the group said.