Video: Not Normal
Some first rate MINI marketing for you folks today. For all the things MINI does well, and for all the ways they sometimes come up short, we can’t deny that as a brand, MINI is consistently focused on having a lot of fun. In this latest video, we’re all encouraged to escape the ordinary …in a MINI. Video after the break.
<p>Guess I’m not a “normal” hipster.</p>
<p>How did the hipster burn his tongue? He drank his coffee before it was cool.</p>
<p>I liked it. Why be conventional? If you want to color outside the lines and that doesn’t hurt anyone else then more power to ya.</p>
<p>That’s a cool video.</p>
<p>And now mini is making minis that are different than the normal hatch mini. Cwazy.</p>
<p>If you are planning to drive on the highest ‘motorable’ road in the world at 5602m (18,380 feet), or 200m higher than Everest base camp, or half the cruising altitude of a passenger jet, it would be normal to choose a high riding 4X4 diesel SUV for the journey, wouldn’t it? The guys at CAR magazine, however, chose a standard spec MINI Cooper Convertible petrol automatic. That’s not normal!
CAR has just celebrated 50 years of publishing. When launched in 1962, it was called ‘Small Car and Mini Driver’, but later shortened its title to just ‘CAR’. India has just become MINI’s 100th market, so to celebrate both landmarks, CAR went on an epic ten-day 2000-mile journey from India’s capital, Delhi, to the Himalayas, to literally put MINI on top of the world.
The guys at CAR knew only too well of the dangers that faced them, the least of which was life threatening altitude sickness, for which they were given medication. ‘Any drive that requires drugs must be interesting’, they said, ‘but when our map had ceasefire lines and disputed territories marked on it, we knew it was going to be interesting’.
To make matters worse during the journey, freak rain storms in northern India caused numerous landslides and washed away roads. They also had to endure the notorious road called Rohtang La, meaning ‘ground of corpses’, named for people who had died trying to cross it. This was the only place where the MINI needed to be pulled on its belly through a live landslide. ‘The MINI didn’t seem bothered at all’ the guys said, ‘and we were genuinely impressed by the toughness of this little car’.
At the end of the 2000-mile journey, they discovered only that the exhaust was as dimpled as a golf ball, the oil pans for the engine and gearbox were bent but not cracked, and the Continental run-flats hadn’t punctured despite hundreds of miles over vicious little stones. They concluded, ‘If you are going to sell a car successfully in a hundred markets, it needs to be properly engineered for all circumstances, and this one plainly is’.</p>