Bingo!! That’s just what I wanted, so I ordered the white wheels.

Never too old for Fisher-Price.

It can look whimsical without ACTUALLY looking like a child’s toy. It LITERALLY looks like something from Fisher-Price. That’s the reason for the sniping.

. Reverse should NOT be next to first gear, IMHO — that’s a safety defect in the current model. “Right and down” is the best place for it. And there should be a prominent indicator light (probably yellow, a distinctive color) that illuminates when the car is in reverse. A yellow R would be ideal.

Completely disagree with you there. If there’s one place it should not be, it’s next to the gear that you’d be in going the fastest – 6th. Every BMW since the dawn of time has had the “push hard – over to the left and up” design. With 40+ years of experience, they’ve determined that to be the best, safest, and easiest placement to use.

Air conditioning, defrosting, and heating controls should be intuitively operable with minimum or no need to glance at the knobs and buttons. I’m not sure this design passes that test.

I think it does. For one the number of buttons that are roughly the same size and shape has decreased. They’ve also gotten larger and easier to distinguish from one another.

Same with the radio controls, and they might be even worse.

They’re pretty much identical to the E90 3 series – which is to say that they are a slight improvement over adequate (which is the grade I’d give those in the current MINI or the E46 3 series).

Car designers, please take note: take a random driver and sit them down in the driver’s seat. Fashion a vision blocking device so they cannot see the knobs, dials, and buttons. Ask them to perform routine tasks like, “turn on the rear defroster.” And see how well they do.

BMW runs countless usability tests on their interiors they produce. I agree that more work could be done (especially on the iDrive interface) but they are active in this area.

As far as the comment about the “Toy Car Look” I don’t see that at all.. And I’ve owned 3!

The early Mini had no dash … just a shelf with a center pod:

1971 Mini Cooper S Interior

Center Pod Instrumentation

I think the new dash, as shown, has a lot of retro appeal. The center stack is not my favorite thing and I think many have suggested Fisher-Price and I think that’s pretty right on… I can image… “Here’s the way a cow sounds… Mooooooooooooo.” coming out when you press a button. But the design guy side of me says… kinda kool.

Over on Ian’s GBMINI there is some comparison shots, from MINI2 I think, of the older car and the ’07. Pretty amazing to see how close they really are in looks. My opinion… the ’07 looks like a early stage design version of the present car that got shelved and should have stayed there!

As far as the BS going on about the steering wheel I think Ian is right… I myself hated the 3 spoke but after seeing it thought it was kinda kool.

Never did warm up to the new tail lites but like what I see on the ’07 but they will probably never see the lite of day here in USA.

Thanks Gabe…. for your continual and well thought out presentations of MINIANA. Having recently done my first Website/Blog I have a better understanding of the work you put in… Thanks, RB!

So BMW thinks there audio is better than any other and there is no need for after market…?

The A/C controls wouldn’t look so cheap if they were done in black. I think what really makes them look so bad is they look home made and stuck on instead of being integrated into the panel. Maybe final production will be more refined.

The photo here and the prototypes don’t have the final plastic in this area. In fact there was a sticker on the black plastic in the prototypes mentioning this.

Top to bottom: speedo, CD, adjustment dial, wings logo, toggles

In the interior photos from the press day, the CD is covered up with black masking.

http://mini2.com/images/predrive_all/laser_blue/PICT0112.jpg

Some comments:

1. It looks like the speedometer needle will obscure several indicators as it sweeps across the dial. I was hoping that wouldn’t be the case this time.

2. The date and time are displayed. I wonder what the time source is. Will we now have the spectacle (just like half the VCRs in America) of MINIs blinking 12:00 (or maybe 0:00)? :-)

3. Anybody know where the CD goes, or is this the world’s first iPod-only vehicle? (And where does the iPod go?) If the latter, would have been cool if MINI got a sweet deal as the first to license Apple’s clickwheel.

Let’s not leap to conclusions. The quality of the plastics is impossible to judge from a Web photo.

I don’t think anyone has mentioned safety yet, and that should be the first priority for any redesign. For example, Paul at mini2.com indicated that reverse had moved next to first in his prototype. I’m not sure what he meant by that, since my 2004 Cooper S has reverse right next to first gear. Reverse should NOT be next to first gear, IMHO — that’s a safety defect in the current model. “Right and down” is the best place for it. And there should be a prominent indicator light (probably yellow, a distinctive color) that illuminates when the car is in reverse. A yellow R would be ideal.

Air conditioning, defrosting, and heating controls should be intuitively operable with minimum or no need to glance at the knobs and buttons. I’m not sure this design passes that test. For example, the roll up/roll down knob might be an intuitive design for choosing air flow (bottom to floor, middle settings for mixed and panel only, and top for top vents only), but instead it’s a lost opportunity and controls fan speed. Defrost is in the middle position on the middle knob? Hmmm… And I guess that dial all the way to the right is temperature control. And how do you tell (without looking, and even then I’m not sure) how far up/down those roll up/roll down knobs are? How about the middle knob — how do you tell where it’s pointing? The current controls at least have that — I know, without looking, where the knob is pointing just by touch. It’s not clear this redesign even has that.

Same with the radio controls, and they might be even worse.

Car designers, please take note: take a random driver and sit them down in the driver’s seat. Fashion a vision blocking device so they cannot see the knobs, dials, and buttons. Ask them to perform routine tasks like, “turn on the rear defroster.” And see how well they do. Run similar tests without the vision blocking device, but run a driving simulation and measure the time the driver spends glancing at the controls. Run this test both with and without labels on the dials, buttons, and knobs. (Perhaps test different labels, too.) Revise your design, loop, repeat. Then, and only then, make it look cute.