Nothing’s Perfect: The R56 Misses

This will be a styling critique, as the line to drive one was long, and time was short. Seat time will have to come later.

Interior Okay, okay, the MINI world is not ending – it just looks that way from certain angles; unfortunately, one of the worst offenders is right from the driver’s seat. The center stack really is cheesy looking, with ungodly plasticky looking, and feeling, knobs and controls – it is beyond me why MINI chose these design elements; they’re even somewhat confusing, and certainly non-intuitive. They have a “cartooney” look, a discordant design theme carried over onto the larger fender flares and an overall lack of subtlety and refinement, strangely in exact opposition to the mechanical end of the new design. The lounge leather was admittedly awesome, tho – the seats looked and felt like something from a much more expensive car. I’m all over those. The codpiece seats still look yucky to me, but they are quite comfy – I’d jump for the lounge, myself, tho. The pedals are bit too far apart for comfortable heel-and-toe, but I get a sense of more room in length for the front-seaters, at least as far as the general placement of things.

I’m not too sure about the interrupted oval elements in the doors; not only is there less storage all around in the interior – you can just about keep a pair of matchbooks in the rear seat “coin slots”, and maybe three of ‘em in the extremely reduced front door pockets, and don’t get me started on the glove box: room for one only unless you cut the fingers off both – anyway, with the driver’s door open it looked like two broken rib ends sticking out of the red leather….uh….no. The back seats are still for Billy Barty and his family, but they’ll have more butt room, at least – sadly, my 6’2″ noggin says less headroom.

Exterior As I mentioned, the bigger flairs are, well, BIGGER, and they serve the new design to keep the proportions commensurate with the first MINIs, but I can’t help thinking 3/4 of an inch less outside radius would have been more elegant. Under no circumstances should these be painted body-color, the car would look heavy and disjointed. I still would have an assendectomy if I got the newest MINI coupe – Sir Mix-a-lot might like it, but I see it as a styling continuation of the less stylish, higher belt-line – it looks fat-assed. Ixnay on the uttbay, guys, in the next new and improved, and try to slim down the chrome trim – looks like it was stuck on with a trowel, when it should be done with a fine camel-hair brush. The headlights are deceptively large – they look a helluva lot smaller than they really are…until you open the hood. Holy Cow! I can stick my head thru the headlight cut-outs, and I did so without removing my specs – freaking huge holes! I could only think of Mister Magoo, but that wasn’t the cartoon element they were shooting for, I’m sure. Speaking of opening the hood, interestingly, MINI has chosen a retro theme – they are acknowledging the blood line of old Mini release latch, literally. On the original Minis, the latch was hangin’ down right in the center of the open hood, and was a nice skull-gouger if you weren’t careful; the newest MINI has a frighteningly similar one offset to the right now, so if you do a lot work on your engine, better hope your genetics don’t hold the promise of male-pattern baldness. Then again you could always say you got the scars fighting Finnish sailors down on docks, I guess.

The presentation of the new MINI engine is BBBBOOOORRRIIINNNGG. What happened to that wonderful intercooler???, a flat-out loud visual that your ‘S’ had something special in there! Now there’s just a coupla boxes about the size of a fat man’s lunch, just sittin’ there like lumps. Oh the humanity – it will never, I repeat never, look as boy racer as the last ‘S’, sigh – remember when everybody would open their hood to show off, even the Coopers? I predict this will be less common. And what’s with the agricultural exhaust pipe cover right in front on the ‘S’ – it looks like something my 10-year old once hammered out of a Julian Pie tin in Scout Camp. Change the stampings there, boys. The best thing, tho, is this motor will be easier to work on, and has less of thrown-together look overall – a place for everything, and everything in its place.

The headlights really do look good with the hood closed, and if it saves a few jay-walkers, at least MINI did a bang-up job on the front-end styling overall, IMHO. The average joe will prolly not even notice any difference, and a lot of slight inconsistencies in the previous version are cleaned up nicely – the grill is beautifully proportioned, and no hint of the dreaded “snout” look. I’m not going to comment on the scoop – ’nuff said already, by just about everyone in the civilized world. The rear tail lights have a bit of the too-heavy chrome look, but once again, MINI has kept the faith with placement and shape. I noticed as well the rear wheel wells are less shrouded on the inside – the bits and pieces of the suspension are much more visible, giving it a look like a thinly-veiled racer. The new yellow – FEKKIN’ AWESOME! Close to Fly Yellow, and so much more warmer – way to go MINI!

Overall: Grade B

Outside: Grade – B+, with a mention in dispatches.

Inside: Grade – C, with a lot of homework assigned and the admonishment that the parents don’t do all the work.

Engine compartment: Grade – C+, with a chance to improve with extra project work.

For an evolutionary design, MINI got it pretty much right – strangely enough, on the way up and back, we saw a split window Beetle, an oval-window Beetle, and one of the last non-Super Beetles from the seventies – evolutionary designs that were related and deliberately so; MINI needs to focus on keeping the MINI an icon, and if that means a certain amount of sameness, they need to keep those basic elements just so; any tweaking should be done as carefully as possible. You don’t want MINI becoming just another small car that follows styling conventions just for the sake of caprice.

BCNU, Rob in Dago

I’ve had the chance to see the new Mini up close already, since it’s been on sale since November over here.

Interior-wise, I like most changes, except the centre console, the enormous speedo and the integration of the radio controls into the speedo. The centre console, I have to agree with previous posters, is probably largely corrected by making the controls black instead of silver, like it is with the “old” car. I like the subtleness in which the R50′s A/C controls look like a Mini logo, but almost everyone needs to be made aware of it. Not so with the R56, it’s glaringly obvious.

I’m not a fan of integrated audio systems, but it’s the tendency in the industry. However, I think Mini’s choice to put the controls inside the centre speedo is poor. The speedo has become too large now. I have no idea what came first, the decision to make the speedo even larger than it is on the R50, or the decision to integrate the audio controls into it, but the end result is a speedo that now really is much too big (it already was cartoonishly big on the R50), with a weird bunch of controls at the bottom that don’t belong there. I hope that with a mid-lifecycle facelift Mini will take the size down to the size of the R50 again, and put the audio controls in a more conventional configuration in the center stack below the speedo. I realise this will also mean that the current (very original) solution for the nav system, with the speed indicator running in a ring surrounding the nav screen, will probably not be feasible anymore because the speedo will be too small for both a screen and the speedo ring. Maybe Mini should stop trying to make the nav screen fit with the centre speedo design theme and just integrate a more square screen in the design of the dash for cars with sat nav.

Lastly, the side vents are just too bulky, both on the Cooper and Cooper S (while on pictures the chrome ones on the S bothered me most, in real life it were the huge black plastic versions of the Cooper that were just too much). I hope some after market company has someone with some good taste amongst their employees who can come up with a more distinguished design, maybe something with wire mesh (chrome or body color).

The wide black plastic trim apparently is dictated by the raised waist line, which in turn is dictated by a higher bonnet. I hope that by the time the next iteration of the Mini comes along, active bonnet systems are more common (i.e. development investments have returned, and production is a little less expensive) and the designers can return to the more sleak design of the R50/R53.

I’m with your GadgetGav there are some major flaws in the design and we as readers welcome the opportunity that MF has provded to voice our subject opinions.

If this forum begins to censor and/or edit our freedom of expression for whatever reason it will have failed to fulfill its purpose and succeed to alienate its readers. Both negative and positve comments should be welcomed. I can appreciate the advisory issued stating that we should reserve our critiques until we actually see the vehicle and possibly drive it since our impressions of images may not always coincide with first-hand observation. In the case of the ’07 the impression is reghrettably identical — disappointing at best.

I’m not a previous MINI owner and don’t care to redesign this or the previous car or preserve it’s icon status. Here are some non-religious misses that really stood out to me today. All easy to fix!

1. Sunroof shade. It’s lightweight, otherwise I don’t know…
2. HVAC controls. Was this a Yaris through out? Needs some heft.
3. Standard Stereo sound. Take the $11.28 they spent on 6 speakers and triple it.
4. Cloth seat material. This fabric seems to be common now but seems cheap. (See VW Rabbit base 2dr.) Just the centers are fine but the with the sides it’s too much cheapness. Maybe a heavier side material or leatherette sides.
5. Seats can still use a bit of comfort engineering or something.(See VW.)
6. Standard instrument trim rings are cheap. Find something better for those that will not want to pay or see the nice chrome.
7. Windows did not auto up, only down. (See VW.)

I too was among the group attending the unveiling of the R56 at MoP last Thursday (Kudos to MoP btw, it was a great event). Some observations:

To me the front end of the Cooper has lost the visual appeal of it’s predecessor, there’s very little character there anymore. The MCS, on the other hand, looks much nicer; the extra height (due to the turbo) and hood scoop really do help.

The large Speedo looks fine to me but the center stack needs some improvement. The volume control looks ridiculous sitting there by itself, I shouldn’t have to select the navigation system just to make the center stack look less offensive.

I have Auto A/C now but if I were purchasing an ’07 I would not select that as an option, doing so would result in 4 (one fake) additional buttons below the Auto A/C unit.

Talking of buttons, I noticed the Sports button was in front of the gear shift along with 2 other buttons (can’t recall what they were for); it just looked like buttons were everywhere!

Sport button – this is a MINI, why do we need to push a Sports button to get the throttle response and steering feedback that should be there by default?!

The 15 inch wheels on the Cooper looked way too small for the car.

The extra (‘secret’) glove box was left bare (presumably the CD changer was going in there) and looked ridiculous. The flimsy cover will, I’m sure’ develop rattles because there doesn’t appear to be much holding it in place. Why oh why can’t MINI just give us an in-dash multi-CD player like everyone else seems to offer (some as standard) instead of having to pay an additional $500!

Love the Lounge Leather seats – but are they worth an additional $1,900?!

Thanks for the opportunity to vent(!), hopefully BMW/MINI is paying attention and will rectify some of these issues.