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MotoringFile reader Brad Herman sent us this little surprise this past Sunday. It seems he had a similar experience to to what I had from a few weeks back. Here's an excerpt of the story behind the photo:
Sunday I was lucky enough to spot a Hot Orange MCS Convertible going the other direction on the PCH in Malibu, CA. I made the quickest U-turn I could and followed it into a shopping center. After loosing track of it several times I finally spotted it at the grocery store. I parked several rows away and waited for the man to go in. He left the top down giving me some access to it. The first thing I noted was how nice the Hot Orange is in person. You can see how it contrasts with my Chili Red. The whole car just looks good. It has the interior chrome package, even chromed Nav. The quality of the chrome was very high and looked like a great fit for the car.
I have to say the whole car felt very MINI. They did a good job of keeping the spirit in the new car. The fabric roof tucks nicely behind the rear seats. It's also softer than I would have guessed, not as plastic feeling as some other convertible roofs. The bars retract to an angle that keeps the lines of the car. The Chrome Roll bars are sweet. The back seats are smaller, looks like you loose about 4″ on each side for the roof mechanism. This car had the option wind screen mesh fitted, it looks like it pops in or out in just a moment like the boot privacy cover. The retracting rear windows don't seem to go all the way down, about 1/2″ sticks up but this could be a pre-production thing. It also lacked the S's Chrome gas cover.
As the car is an 05 it did have all the new 05 features including the new headlights, tail lights and extra storage under the hand break. The new headlights match the car very well, I would pick them over my current ones. I'm not a huge fan of the new tail light design. As these have been well documented I didn't take many new photos.
You can check out Brad's entire story and many more photos here.
Seems like Brad's experience is somewhat similar to mine: MINI Cabrio in Person
<p>Nice article … the best part is the chocolate MINIs .. so I ordered one!</p>
<p>;-D</p>
<p>Notice this car has S-lites not the new wheelset</p>
<p>I still don't uunderstand exactly why the chrome gascap has not been included in this package. Could it be simply because it doesn't line up as nicely with the door handle as it does on the coupe? There has to be a better explanation…</p>
<p>Perhaps the gas intake had to be lowered in the body due to the convertible parts above it (plus, the regular S gascap is recessed, taking up even more room). Looks like a design/engineering move to accomodate the covertible top when it's collapsed.</p>
<p>Cool pics.</p>
<p>I want to know if there is anything interesting written on that clipboard. :)</p>
<p>That privacy screen seems rather silly. It kind of defeats the fact that it's a 4 seater…</p>
<p>That's not a privacy screen but a screen to eliminate air buffer at speed.</p>
<p>It's hard to believe the plate “TOPLESS” wasn't already used in California. I thought people in Cali were the creative ones. ;)</p>
<p>Doh. I just caught the end of the article on a re-read. I hope that's my goof for the day.</p>
<p>Hey, this might be a dumb question, but can you still fold the back seats down in the ragtop? With the trunk opening the way it does, especially, I can imagine keeping the back seats down most of the time, using the extra space for tailgaiting, etc. But with the roll bar, is that possible?</p>
<p>Yes, you can fold the backseats down. It's a marvelous thing.</p>
<p>I'm sorry to see the chrome gascap go, too. Maybe they could replace it with a chrome gascap that actually unscrews and leave off the door to make up for the clearance problems Shawn speculated on.</p>
<p>I miss the chrome gas cap to but the chrome package inside makes it worth it.</p>
<p>I love the interior chrome too- too bad Gabe says it may not be easy to retrofit. I'll find a way though!</p>
<p>I saw this car, Friday night on Pacific Coast Hwy on my way home. My neck still hurts !! It looked great even in passing on the opposite side of the road. I am waiting to order an “S” version to sit next to my PW/PW MCS.</p>
<p>From the pictures, is it just a visual effect or is the “third brake light” integrated into the chrome trim above the boot?</p>
<p>As far as I can tell, that's not an authentic California plate, for a few reasons: the most important (and obvious, to a graphics-type person), the font is completely wrong. It's nowhere near what is seen/used in these parts…the spacing and top-down ratio is completely off. The most obvious, is the side-to-side aspect. Those letters should be spreading completely across the length of the plate–7 is the limit around here. Looks like a fakie/knockoff/internet version. </p>
<p>For support, I could also mention that there is no 'Month Due' sticker on the left (it is white w/ blue letters), nor does there appear to be a front plate, although it is not clear if there ever was one. California IS known for its creative 'plating'.</p>
<p>I would have figured the line “I changed the licence plate on the car out of courtesy to BMW/MINI.” in the 5th paragraph would have made that obvious Darren.
BTW both stickers are on the plate but blown out by the flash, they are from the origional photo. look at the high res version.
The plate graphic came from here:
<a href="http://www.acme.com/licensemaker/" rel="nofollow ugc">http://www.acme.com/licensemaker/</a></p>
<p>The car looks great! Now tell me how did he get one so soon? I thought they were coming out this fall? And does anyone know how much a loaded S convert will run? Have a great day!</p>