By chance I came across this Mini owner in the Netherlands who converted his R50 into a MCS, spared no expense. It is over at Minitorque. A fun read and inspiring. The guy has taste. As NAM will kill the link you have to google "My Photo Whoring Mini Cooper"







Like him, I would ask if you were to replace your R50, R52, or R53 Mini, what car will you buy that gives you comparable smiles per mile? For me current MINI is totally out of the question. Focus once I consider ugly as butt, I will pick over the current gen MINIs. I will entertain the current Korean performance offerings over the BMW sub-brand. I, on the other hand, appreciate the difficult spot the MINI is in given the current state of the automotive industry.

 

All I can say is "that’s why they make chocolate and vanilla ice cream"

 

Why would the link be killed???????????

 

It has been my experience with links to the competitions. I had first hand experience with links to Motoring Alliance that were neutered. Let see if it is true or not. Here is the thread.

 

I wonder if the link is working because it's "buried" in the thread and not typed out. I'm surprised Motoring Alliance even shows up instead of being censored with ***.

 

I even had a link to MA in PM that got censored .

 

For now I am not going to worry about a forum on the other side of the pond. It appears they are using v-bulletin as their platform that just happens to be owned by IB that also owns NAM.

 

I have no idea IB owns v-bulletin. I thought NAM and many forums uses (buy/subscribe to) similar forum platforms.

BTW, I notice NAM only enabled a subset of the smilies. I tried type in some that I know but no luck.

 

The NAM/MA relationship goes back at least 6 years... things went south, people were not happy and censorship of links and the words were enforced across NAM. Seems as it may be lifted (and great to see the resurgence in the NAM with the new excellent moderators) but it was a real thing.

 

IMO Facebook took over for people ranting and raving leaving the forums for the most part to those that want to talk about the cars they have. There is just so much information within the NAM threads, a treasure for sure.

It is also my opinion that it would be great to have more links to threads on MiniTorque as they are mostly a Euro forum and we do not hear allot of what is happening on the other side of the pond. They might also like to hear what we crazies are doing over here.

 

Thinking the MA/NAM thing was like 2010. Allot has happened since then. For me, anybody that has a MINI and cares enough to post about it in any forum is AOK.

 

The thing about facebook is people gravitate to it as it reducees so much friction of sharing photos. The other factor is the yesteryear's "free" photo hosting services finally had to face the laws of economics. I had found foto-****-bucket tacky from day one even as a viwer. Flickr was good in the very early years, and I tried it but hit the paywall after only uploading a hundred photos or so.

I use Google now and is all free. Not exactly free as I sold my privacy soul to the company. If anyone, Google will likely around longer than most with this free services. The best part with Google is the photo storage is unlimited except with the really high rez ones. I only upload to it photos that I always post'ed to optimize for blog and forum use.

A fun fact, for some who never used the internet with computer, they think Facebook is the internet.

 

I doubt Google's "free" service will ever go away. It's a perfect loss leader - storage is cheap and it brings a TON of people into their ecosystem.

 

I worked for a Renault Dealer way back '1979 to '81, then came the decline and death of Renault USA, thank you Jeep/Eagle.

I would add a Brand New 2018 Renault Megane R.S. PACK RED DESIGN to my stable if they were offered here in the US.

But then again I wanted a 2017 Ford Street Legal Formula Ford.

Motor On!

 

Perhaps more aptly Google's free storage is not so much as lost leader but, like search, an important part of the company's scale of this planet's data gathering for big data mining. Google and Facebook have very sophisticated AI for image recognition and information extraction. They don't do this out of the goodness of their corporate hearts. They want to know you very well so they can serve you very personalized adverts.

Google from time to time will scrub their spit-on-the-ceiling initiatives and shut down those that do not stick. Some would be modified or evolved - like Google Drive that morphed into Google Sync. Picasa got killed.

 

I like Renault Megane. Too bad not landing on this soil. Not a whole lot of good choices for fun hot hatch. Civic Type R is very impressive in performance, but very hard to warm up to the in your face styling in and out.

Renault Alpine A110 is another retro fun car that we are deprived of.

 

Here's another Renault you usually don't see on US soil. I saw this Clio V6 Sport in parked in Monterey last year.

 

Nice catch there. I can totally go head over heel for this one. Got all the right ingredients of fun. It is gorgeous.

Wonder if it is the same car on this Nice Price or Cracked Pipe piece.

 

Here is a video of it that seems very fair.

 

I guy in my area has one of these. Jeremy Clarkson, 6-5, did a review years back and yes he fits in it.

Great sounding engine.

You Tube

 

Ah! A JDM Kei-car.

 

I had a S2000 the same color. 9k redline, what a screamer

 

I had a Honda S600 (~1965) when I lived in Japan. 600cc, DOHC, four side draft Keihin carburetors, and a combination driveshaft/chain final drive.. 9500rpm redline on the stock motor. I had it replaced with one that redlined at 11K. Only weighed 1500 pounds. Fun little car, but I couldn't drive it with the top up.
Mine looked just like this minus the whitewalls.

 

S2000 has the amazing screaming engine. It got a lot of bad raps for no torque. There were one in our ran group during HPDE and I wanted to see how well it does. Alas the owner didn't drive well so it is hard to gauge. I had seen Honda S600 overseas. A nicely proportioned K-car (not the Amarican K-car).

Here is my Miata. Stock to stock Mini is a much better car in every respect, especially the quality. Driving Miata in the rain is miserable and dangerous as all you can see is the mist from the sprays because of the low windshield. The hardtop removes the cowl shakes.

hardtop, LSD, no AC, no power window/lock

 

I had two Miatas. More fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow.