Must admit that I was rather sad to see the black-eyed purple disapear. However I might just cure this once I take delievery of my new mini.

Is there anything wrong with that? My association wasn’t with Rover, but with the classic Mini (objectively, the same thing, but subjectively a world of difference ;)).

In the last years of production it too was available in Nightfire Red and it looked awesome. Only question, indeed, if it’s only the name that is the same for this color, or whether the color itself also it close enough to my taste. From the above sample, it looks a bit darker (and duller) than that “other” Nightfire Red.

Would love to be able to compare EB and LB.

BMW 2002′s had the best colors …

Taiga, Inka and Golf

I’ve owned/I own Yellow, Purple and Orange (as well as black, but that one doesn’t count here.) ALL have been wannabe colors!

The Orange is really a brown in anythng but so bright sunlight you can’t look anyway. Now INKA, THAT was orange.

Yellow? It was a dark yellow. Sure, loud, but still reserved. Not a pure, loud yellow. It was good in the sun, but it should be good 24 hours a a day.

Purple? That’s not purple, unless, again, it’s in direct light. A purple should be purple, even 10 minutes before sundown.

I mentioned Inka. If I recall, that color was wildly successful in the 1970′s. Why not be at the cutting edge in EVERYTHING they do, instead of design and advertising? Is there a VP somewhere who has convinced corporate that the designs are so off the wall MINI had better tone down the colors to make them more mainstream? If I am going to drive something not mainstream, don’t make me take it in Detroit-stlye colors. I recall reading once there is something like 300 billion choices for the car with options included. Well, how about letting the color swatches reflect that!

Which comes around to these colors specifically. Blue? It’s Ok (in my book. I DO realize many will like this and I can’t really fault them for picking it, just for not offering a louder blue too/instead.) But that red? THAT is not red. It is a cranberry of some sort. (Perfect for the midnight bladder infection cranberry juice run, I guess) Either call it what it is, or better, offer a fire engine red!

My .02c David

BTW, although I never owned them, probably my two fav colors off the line were the silk green and pepper white. I wanted the green, but it wasn’t available in the 02 S (What was THAT about?!?) and the white, although an extremely pretty white, just wasn’t ‘loud’ enough for me. And even though these would have lost to an Inka, etc in a heartbeat, they are great colors though, MINI!

I just ordered a Dark Silver with the Silver roof MCS and the look is tops, but I’m also a big fan of the Chili Red, so that’s a tough one. The CR is very classically MINI but the DS really shows off the lines of the car.

As for Black, I can’t speak to it on the MINI, but I did have a metallic black Prelude back in the day. Black looks so superb when it’s clean – but that’s the catch – keeping it clean. Gabe’s the one to ask about black – with the Vader MINI and all.

As for the new colors, they look great, but the names make me think “American Gladiators.” Ha ha!

According to Billy who comments here occasionally and says he works at the Oxford plant, there is in fact a new “Sparkling Silver – A much nicer, more reflective colour than the current Pure Silver” link

DB is probably freaking out right now.

WOOHOO! That Nightfire Red sure looks pretty close to VR. That’s almost enough to make me hold out for an ’07.

Not quite, but almost