first lemme just get this off my chest. i was doing laundary and was really bored waiting, so walked across the street to buerge ford on santa monica, where they also sell saleens. walked inside, there was a saleen s281 supercharged, a parnelli jones saleen, a shelby gt, and a blue shelby gt500. the gt500 had a $20,000 mark-up. i almost puked :impatient $20,000 mark-up! stuff like that should be illegal! i grabbed 3 copies of each saleen brochure they had and promptly walked out with disgust

so last week i was coming back from a camping/road trip and near san luis obispo on the 1 i saw a heavily camouflaged r56, bras front and back, on the opposite side of the freeway, followed by an mcs convertible. i was really tempted to turn around and follow them...but didn't. sorry, no photos. was really sure that it wasn't a clubman, so wonder what it could be. jcw stage-2?

 

and as luck would have it, i ran into the same car or a similarly-disguised car in venice! and i had my camera! so here're the photos to prove it

 

That's very odd indeed! It's got a bit of a military or sci-fi vibe.

 

Err not a clubman...

maybe they're testing the 08 powertrain...but why the masking?

Could be the AWD version as well.

 

Hmm, time to start hunting this thing down, following it to its MINI-Cave