Just order my MCS this weekend and can't wait to hit the road with it in a couple months. I am curious to know your experiences with family and friends that do not share your enthusiasm for your wonderful MINI. Do they give you a hard time? How do you respond to them in a saucy MINI-esque way? My mother in law kept asking why I ordered a car named after a Disney character and then when she saw a picture of it, she was like, 'THAT ugly thing?' LOL! Clearly she doesn't 'get' it yet.

 

I'd say 80% of those I know love my MINI.
20% have no idea and think it is less than usual for whatever reason.

Do you like SUVs? If your brother bought an SUV would you say anything negative about it to him? What would he do about it?

Most SUV drivers don't care about what others think.

As a MINI driver you don't have to pay any attention to what others say especially anything as subjective as how it looks or "it's too small".

Heck, I've been looking at the Smart TwoFour. Now that is small. Toyota Yaris is small (sort of). I think more cars will be heading smaller and smaller.

SUVs will die when gas prices jump high, similar to the end of dinosaurs. How poetic. Unless of course there are some smart dealers like Honda that are planning turbo diesel SUV and MINIvans. Those are not too bad on mpg. If SUVs were hybrid that's not too bad either.

The MINI you bought is for YOU. Enjoy it and stick around people that think like you. Most of use really like our MINIs. A few have mechanical problems and eventually part with our cars. Some have families that are too large to fit in a MINI. Some will move and sell. Most will remember.

Find a good local MINI club, make new friends and spend more time out of the house and away from your relatives.

 

I think most people are shocked the car is as roomy as it is inside.
They think its cute, worry that it so small, isnt it dangerous ? , etc.

Once they look closely, they understand its more user friendly than it appears at first blush. They never will understand the true LOVE we have for these cars until they drive one. As soon as I got behind the wheel of a MINI back in 2002, I knew I had to have one and SOON. I am on my second MINI--- Real drivers get it , SUV drivers never will--that's their loss.

 

I get this a lot. I'm over 6' tall and everyone asks me "how do you fit in that"? I always say "actually with room to spare".

 

Got a lot of weird looks when I sold my G35 for the MINI, but I not as much now. My response would now be in mock aggreement... I don't justify a thing.

 

If everyone got it, there would only be MINIs on the road. My arm would fall off from waving to everybody else. How dreadful...

 

At least since each MINI is uniquely configured, you would at least still be able to find it in the parking lot when you go shopping!

 

my GF's mom hates the fact that i purchased a Mini. she keeps saying how unsafe it is because of how small it is. i keep having to tell her, its not the car, its the people driving the cars and the cars around the mini. its pretty much in 1 ear and out the other with her. her comments toward me are in one ear and out the other as well hehe

 

You love your MINI, but who doesn't?.....

Anyone who has to ride in the rear seats for an extended period of time...

 

Show her this, then this video and this video. Quality engineering is more important than sheer mass alone... however, both at the same time would indeed be safest. Problem is that most big American car companies have focused on generating high profits by building large SUVs & Pickups for cheap... and charging high prices. Lots of profit margin.

Larger does not guarantee safer.

Also, while you're at it, show her this too.

 

The only people I know of who don't like MINIs are the ones who don't know Minis...trouble is there's lots of those types around here. Once they are a bit more familiar w/ things (heard a lecture from me) their lack-of-enthusiasm seems to vanish. They may not really "get it", but at least they aren't haters any more.

 

The woman in the enormous SUV who thinks I stole her parking space yesterday at that mall...

It was a very busy day with nearly all spaces full at the mall. I see someone pulling out of a space in the row next to me and I hurry over to take the COMPACT space. In the meantime, a woman in an enormous SUV (Expedition, Navigator, or Yukon size) also thinks she's going to take the space. I zip into it right in front of her...then I see her gesturing to me out her car window like she just can't believe the audacity...

Did I behave badly? Maybe a little. I comfort myself by thinking a) I did see the space first, and b) I saved her from behaving badly herself by preventing her from parking her over-sized vehicle in a too-small space.

This lady does not love my Mini

 

Have you hear the old story/joke about the elderly lady in her big MB (not sure if it's true but has made the rounds)? Some young person in a tiny car (not necessarily a MINI) zipped into a space ahead of her while she was waiting to park. The young person gets out and says: "That's what you can do when your young and quick" and starts to walk into the mall.

He hears crunch crunch, looks back, and the elderly lady pushes his tiny out of the way as she backs in her big MB. He comes running back out, quite angry, screaming: "Lady, WTH are you doing?"

She looks back and says: "That's what you can do when your old and rich"

 

Sounds like the scene from "Fried Green Tomatoes":

• Evelyn: Excuse me. I was waiting for that space.
• Girl #1: Yeah, tough!
• Girl #2: Face it, lady, we're younger and faster.
• Evelyn: (screams and smashes into the car)
• Girl #2: what are you doing? Are you crazy?
• Evelyn: Face it, girls. I'm older and I have more insurance.

 

Those were good articles. Porsche boxster- very good handling. Wonder about the Porsche Cayenne- very popular SUV for porsche. The reviews indicate handling is porsche like- pretty good, too bad it's not affordable.

You want good handling?-
see
http://www.motortrend.com/features/1...t_handling_car
MINI MCS GP 3rd on Chassis and 5th overall
People have no idea how to drive their big and heavy SUVs.

I drove a city government delivery van for 6 months years ago and it had horrible handling made worse when fully loaded up. If you see any heavy loaded vehicle steer clear and give them a lot of space. They have limited view around them and they can't react well if anything happens- sounds like an SUV (the opposite of a performance vehicle).

 

True. If you're hitting an *unmoveable* object, (like the crash barrier in the offset-collision test you linked to), extra weight by itself is strictly a liability - it doesn't help you at all.

*But*, in the case of two cars colliding, you're generally better-off in the heavier car. The reason is, the odds of being injured/killed in a collision *with another car* are proportional to the change in velocity of your car during the collision. And during a collision between two cars of unequal weight traveling at the same speed, the lighter car *always* suffers more of a velocity change than the heavier car, regardless of how the cars are engineered (crumple zones, etcetera).

And it doesn't have to be a huge weight difference to have a significant effect on your survival rate. In fact, just having the extra weight of a passenger in the car can reduce the fatality risk significantly.

 

I enjoy it when others like my car, but the bottom line is that I bought the Mini because I like it not anyone else. The Mini is not a car for everyone and that's another reason to like it! If I wanted a car that the most people I know would like,I'd bought a Camry or Accord, great cars for the masses....

 

Spot on. Any time you design something that produces passionate reactions, you're guaranteed that some of those passionate reactions will be negative. In the field of industrial engineering, there are plenty of examples of designs that are universally considered to be "pretty good", or at least "not offensive", but there are very few designs that almost everyone *loves*.

In fact, I would go so far to say that if you come up with a design that no one hates, you probably won't find too many people that passionately love it, either.

 

Edited: didn't see where ScottRiqui said the same thing.

 

Many people I talk to think that because the mini is small, it is very unsafe. WELL. After hearing this one too many times (despite seeing many crashes on this forum where people were relatively unscathed), I decided to do a little research. An F-150 was a vehicle many people said would be safer, so i found some videos online of crash tests. I realize that these are not crashing INTO one another, but I believe this says a LOT about which car I would feel safer in. Check it out:

The F-150:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6b2_1186865238

The Mini Cooper:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxyV9Ty_TTU

And after seeing the following video, I dont see myself ever trusting a large vehicle for safety. GO MINI!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiUkk...ld%2Dcar%2Ehtm

 

2004 Ford F-150
http://www.safercar.gov/Index2.cfm?m...ecific+vehicle

2004 Mini Cooper S
http://www.safercar.gov/Index2.cfm?m...ecific+vehicle

Ford wins...

 

Unfortunately, it is very difficult to explain to some people that the most important safety feature in the vehicle: the factory didn't include and is not available from the dealer.

Many people just assume that accidents are unavoidable, purely chance. But, how many of us glance into our rearview mirrors when braking hard? How many of us look both ways before going through a green light? How many of us pay attention to the environment around us while we drive? How many of us have postulated "what would I do" if this or that happened?

The fact is, you can be killed in a tank if you don't pay attention to what you are doing. Those making so much out of the argument that bigger is better are missing the point. The only two things that need to be bigger and better are your driving skill and your span of attention.

dan

 

minibeel, absolutely agreed. I've had rides with some unbelievably bad drivers, and I actually once told them i needed to get out of the car. Ohhh how I wish it was as hard to get a pilot's license as a drivers...

The real point i was trying to make with this post is that the general public may want to take a second glance at a mini when car shopping, instead of instinctively passing it off as unsafe. BMW builds very safe cars. Being an engineer, I respect that value immensely.

 

If a driver's license was as hard to get as a pilot's license...there would be less idiots on the road, less traffic, better quality roads, and gas would be cheaper too. Sounds good to me. Everyone, write your senators.

 

In fact, it makes it worse, due to increased inertia.Agreed. But statistically, there are far more single-car accidents than multiple car accidents, and even then, many more of the multiple-car accidents aren't head-on.

There will very often be a situation where one car is better than another in a particular type of accident, but avoiding accidents in the first place should be the first goal, and then, having the protection to survive the most common accidents should be the second goal. By both of those measurements, I honestly consider the MINI Cooper to be a safer vehicle than the Ford F-150... although Ford did finally put a lot more engineering into the 2005 redesign, so it's not as blatant as it was before.