visibility when the roof is up is woeful. It’s like sitting in a postbox. The only people who can get in the back are those who have stepped on a bomb and the boot is miserable.
And yet, despite all this, it remains a great little car to own. Because the style — and there’s tons of it — buries the substance, it doesn’t feel, or look, like anything else on the road. You therefore get to stand out without actually being in a lay-by trying to make a fan belt from plaits of pubic hair. The only trouble is that the new Cooper S rag top costs £19,000. The car I tested with something called the Chili pack was £21,205. And I’m sorry but if all you want to do is stand out while driving something new, it’d be impossible to ignore — or resist — the £13,605 Fiat 500 Abarth.
And there it is. You can read more here. But be warned, as is customary Clarkson style, the review is opened with a page or two of rambling about arcane references to 1970s British politicians or broad generalizations. My favorite actually comes on page one of this “review”. Look for it.
Owner number 19 has decided to go one step beyond with his MINI E. He is going solar and keeping a blog about it as well.
First of all, I have noticed that some of the blogs by new owners refer to the great handling of the car and the great ergonomics of the interior and how cute the car is. These people have obviously never owned a Mini Cooper before. They are ALL like that. Infact the MINI E is clearly the worst handling model in the line-up due to the extra weight. What I want to do here is focus on the things that make the MINI Es different from their petrol-powered road mates.
Follow the link above to find out his explination of the brake and gas pedals in his MINI. Makes perfect sense. Also follow the link below for the photo gallery.
The first MINI E has been delivered to a lucky owner in Southern California. Lucky for us, he has a blog!
The very first MINI E has been delivered to its very first customer. I am excited and humbled to report that the first MINI E was delivered to me this past Friday. As you will read below, these last few days have been a thrilling kick-off to my one year pioneering experience. There have been many pleasant surprises along the way including a very special car number – 111. Pictured above is my MINI E #111 on my front lawn near sunset this evening (more pictures will follow soon). However, being first to get the car means that I will be the first to return the car one year from now – but I’ll try not to think about that right now.
So far his impression is very positive. Click through to subscribe or read. I will be adding this to the MF News Room today as well.
With all the talk of RWD MINI city cars and FWD MINI speedsters we thought it was worth looking at why front wheel drive can be a great asset to performance cars at the limit. And besides, it’s Friday and we want to watch some video!
We always talk about the comparison between the MINI brand and Apple. Both are considered to be premium brands in their respective segments for a number of reasons. Size and efficiency being one of them.
“To us,” Wu wrote, “the new Mac mini is like a Mini Cooper, a premium small form factor product but with decent horsepower. We believe the Mac mini could turn out to be a surprise dark horse hit.”
The comparison is serendipitous for more than name commonality (although Mini — the car — has always been capitalized). That first commercial product imprinting the Mini name on cultural iconography was sprung on the world 50 years ago this year.
Sure, remote control cars we’ve seen. Full sized even on Discovery Channel. Pretty sure this is the first time you’ve seen one controlled via Bluetooth on a BlackBerry Phone though.
Sure, it’s not MINI related, but it’s Friday and this was the coolest thing I’ve seen in a while.
Over the last year we’ve heard some rumbling that the MINI Crossover didn’t justify the cost of the development as a single model. To put it frankly BMW needed to create another iteration off of the same chassis to make the accountants sign-off on the deal. However it’s only been recently that we’ve started to see real signs of their plans. According to British Magazine Autocar, MINI is planning on a five door two wheel drive model that sits on the same chassis as a way to make the crossover chassis development eventually profitable.
The car will is expected to help round out the MINI range and provide a more efficient people moving option for the MINI brand over the R60 crossover. The expectation is that these additional models will push the brand over the 500,000 mark that will allow research and development programs to finally stand on their own outside of BMW. Autocar expects that we should see some sort of teaser at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September.
There are many parts of the MotoringFile community both on the site and spread throughout the web. With the recent integration with Facebook on MF, we thought it was a good time to take a look at another piece of MF on the interwebs. MF’s Flickr group is a easy way to add your own photos and video to a huge group of users (over 400) and a substantial collection of photos (over 5000). It’s also a great way to see almost every imaginable configuration of MINI on the planet.
So with that said, may we present to you the latest from the MotoringFile Flickr group:
Yesterday we asked the question; how high can you go in building a US spec MINI. Today we’re asking the what is almost the opposite. How little could you put on a MINI from the factory and be happy. Obviously the easy answer for some would be nothing or something aftermarket. But let’s keep it from the factory for arguments sake – the aftermarket question will come next week.
Personally I’m at $24,600 with the MCS above. But we want to hear what the specific option(s) that you can’t live without. How would a bare bones MINI look if you ordered one? What would you option in? What would you leave out? Let’s hear it below.
There’s been a lot of talk recently in the MF comment section about how pricey MINIs have become lately. Even in the US where they have traditionally been relatively cheap, MINI USA has slowly had to raise prices due to a number of reasons. While we’re certainly still of the opinion that the MINI is a relative bargain in some ways, we still are amazed when we see the sticker top out over $50,000 USD.
So our question to you – how high can you really get a MINI? Since MINIUSA.com has hands-down the best configurator of any of the sites worldwide, we’re going to focus on the US market. So get started configurating. Our guess is that the winner will come in the form of a R55 JCW but you never know now that the R57 has been introduced.
That other British automotive show recently took the latest VW Scirocco to the track to a straight-up fight against the stock MINI Cooper S. The result is incredibly close. Take a look below.
MINI’s own magazine MINI International and their blog MINI Space is at the Bread & Butter fashion show this week in Barcelona along with the MINI Crossover Concept. Check it out below.
We’ve said it many times on these pages and now we’re being joined by the experts; the R56 center console is a usability mess. And now the usability experts at usercentric.com have taken the current MINI’s center console to task for being “awkward”. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
…The audio system suffers from an inefficient layout of controls and poor error recovery. The selection dial could be mistaken for the volume control (Figure 3), which actually sits further down below the CD player outside of the main area of interaction. This control is seems disconnected from the rest of the audio system.
Not news to anyone who owns an R56 or R55 but certainly interesting to see it written by usability experts.
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1st Gen MINI R50: One & MC Coupe R52: All 1st Gen MINI Convt. R53: MCS Coupe 2nd Gen MINI R55: Clubman R56: One/MC/MCS Coupe R57: One/MC/MCS Convt. R60: MINI SUV
Sections: Best of the Web, R57 (Conv.) Jun 17th, 2009 11 Comments 
