If people want to buy gas guzzlers, fine with me. I bought the MINI because I wanted it. Had to have it. They probably feel the same way. Pursuit of happiness is waht I'd call it.


That said, I try to pick a fuel pump in close proximity to the worst gas guzzler I can find.

 

It'll be even better when that guy in the Prius flicks you off for getting 25 mpg in your MCS!!!


Right now, I can't seem to get my MPG over 24 with just normal 50:50 driving during breakin. The civic that was replaced with the Mini got 32 on average and as high as 41 on the highway!!!

 

I tend to agree, although the Hummer is an enormous vehicle, and has poor seating options and poor cargo area. It's a choice for someone, but not a choice defended by practicality of passenger space and cargo capacity.

If people are being practical, they'd buy a minivan for that. One with a smallish 6 cylinder engine.

Incidentally and unrelated, I was in seattle a few months ago, and has a VERY fashionable couple fawning over our MINI in a parking lot of a pasta restaurant. Thye asked tons of questions, and were extremely nice. I asked what they were driving now, because I was curious (I had spied a nice VW r32 across the lot and thought it might be that car.) We'll the guy just pointed behind me in a different direction.

It was a white Hummer.

One with probably 10 grand in aftermarket wheels and suspension work, and more. I was stunned at first. Then thought, "We'll that's novel...and maybe less surprising than I first thought."

People buy MINI's for different reasons, and I guess that holds true for Hummers.

Still the toungue bit is funny. Especially if it's followed by a smile.

 

I don't have any bad feelings toward Hummers or their owners. I was debating over whether to save a little longer and buy an H3 myself. Both brands (MINI and Hummer) sell a lot on image, and with my stunning 23.5 MPG in my MCS , I'm glad fuel economy wasn't a factor for me or I'd be pretty ticked right now.

 

I saw a great cartoon that showed a Hummer at the gas pump, the name on the Hummer was "Dummer"

Sure fits....

Exposed

 

I'm missing how you have passed them and can still see their brake lights in your rear view mirror..

I can't see anyones brake lights in mine, tank car or not.


Yup, as someone answered, it's typically a two lane road and we're going in opposite directions... Closter, NJ (Bergen County) area.

And at age 41 I guess it's a combination of making fun of those big school busses and having a sense of humour. Childish? Sure! I'm having fun as much as possible in this lovely world unlike a lot of the uptights out there. Keeps the BP down I suppose.

Leave the Hummers to the military. What a joke. I WILL say, however, if the owners truly used them on the Rubicon or some of the real offroading trails then, hey, by all means, buy that Hummer. I still see it as an insecurity issue.

The Jeep Wranglers are still a better 4 wheeler IMO.

Rant over. Have fun!

 

--You know I read somewhere a while ago that the Hummer and Mini were the two most in-demand vehicles in the U.S. Everyone in Hollywood were clamoring for more of these cars yet they are SO different in form and function.

I chalk up the hummer infatuation as a lack of imagination. It's the keeping up with the Jones's attitude. Well R. Kelly has one so we HAVE to get one too. If I ever have the need to blow 80+ thousand on a truck I think I'd go for the Mercedes AMG M series and still would have enough left over to buy a Mini Cooper S convertible. Both cars would smoke the Hummer, both cars get better mpg than the hummer, and I'd have a Mercedes special edition and a cute little Cooper convertible.

There was another truck that was in the same price range as the Hummer, probably ate as much gas, but was a ton faster and meant for BAHA dessert racing. It was on that show Top Gear and it was SO FAST!!! Of course Top Gear is a British show which just goes to show you. If you want to do something crazy with money and cars, talk to the Brits, they'll show you how to spend it properly.

I've always fancied the brit motorcycle magazines over the american ones too because quite frankly the brits don't care about political correctness. They just want to have fun. =)

--pyratio

 

I don't really mind the SUV's low gas mileage(well, I do, but in an intellectual sort of way), but I do mind how cumbersome they are and how they slow me down. I visualize them as big refrigerators rolling down the road and the drivers usually have their cell phone plugged into the left side of their head, blocking their view of me passing them. Slow to start, slow to turn and slow to stop, they usually take up two spaces in the parking lot. But, I digress from the topic of this thread. I try not to make eye contact with them at the gas station as I pull in, fill up, and leave, while their pump continues to tick off the dollars in their wallet. Their gas bill has almost doubled in the last six months and they are not happy. I just saw on FOX this morning that a gas station attendant was run over and killed by someone in an SUV stealing $52 worth of gas.

 

Lol...I just put $48 in my G35 the other day. It has a 20 gallon tank and with gas prices at $2.90/gallon here, it adds up quick. Can't wait for the day that I have to pay $100 to fill her up!! Luckily, i get about 24 mpg in that car (aboutt he same as our mini)!!!

 

Even if the gas price doesn't phase the average Hummer owner, they deserve to be made fun of simply for wasting the planet's resources.

Not all SUVs are bad. My litmus test for determining whether the SUV owner is a jerk:

1) Is the SUV a V-4 or a hybrid? If so, then the owner is simply driving a fuel efficient city car with plenty of room that is disguised as an SUV and thus is a good person. e.g., baseline Saturn VUE, which is basically just a 4 cylinder plastic car in the shape of an SUV.

2) Is the SUV a V-8 with a trailer hitch or lots of mud on it? If so, then the owner either tows things or for some reason drives in the mud a lot, perhaps as part of their job. Maybe they do contruction/landscaping off in the backwoods or something. Thus they may be justified in owning such a hog and are not the devil.

3) If the SUV is a V-8 and does NOT have a trailer hitch, then the owner is a great big resource hogging gas guzzling jerk.


Really, though, SUVs are overly criminalized. Pickup trucks are just as bad on gas milage. Even the Ford Ranger gets terrible gas milage, much less the F-350. And an 8-cylinder sports car is a gas hog with no excuse, too. Minivans are bad on gas too, though at least in that case, we're reasonably assured that nobody would drive a minivan unless they really needed the space.

 

On that note, is there a hybrid that doesn't look fugly? Seriously, the only reason I'm not interested in a hybrid is because they seem to be universally ugly cars, particularly the Prius. The Honda Insight is a horror as well.

So far the only hybrid I've seen that didn't suck is the hybrid Civic, which basically just looks like a Civic. Still, is there some rule that says a hybrid can't also look cool?

Give me a MINI hybrid. Take out the back seat, put a bunch of batteries there. Or maybe even put the engine in the back with the trunk/batteries under the hood. As long as the BODY looks the same. Then I'd probably own two MINIs: the hybrid for driving back and forth to work and the MCS for weekend fun.

 

I think we need to be careful that in condemning other people's twisted "needs" (justifications) for SUV's we aren't ignoring our own set of "needs" (justifications) for MINI's. My MCS gets rotten gas mileage for such a small car (~24 mpg combined). That's not much better than the M3 it replaced. Every time somebody asks what kind of gas mileage it gets, I'm a little embarrassed.

But for me it's OK because gas mileage had nothing to do with my purchasing decision. I bought it because it's fun. If somebody else bought their H2 because that fits their idea of fun, or even just because they wanted it, that's fine with me. I don't want other people telling me I've got to buy a Civic or a Camry. Therefore I'm going to be very slow to tell the H2/Suburban/Expedition/Escalade crowd they shouldn't buy SUV's.

Pursuit of happiness and private property rights are more important to me than fuel efficiency. As soon as the cost of fuel goes up enough, they'll choose something else. And so will we at some point. But let's don't go preaching at them. We wouldn't want someone insisting we buy something more "practical" would we? Live and let live.

 

I agree with you wholeheartedly eMINI.

 

makes sense, and some people of course do use them for a real purpose like pulling, kids, business... but when i saw a 5' tall woman on a cell phone tooling around in her hummer not paying attention, i get a bit nervous sometimes. what can she possibly have to fill that thing , or an excursion is pushing it too. But like i said, conversly some people do want them for similar purposes as we do our minis.

 

A lot of people get them to feel "safe". Put your kid in the middle of an Excursion and it's going to take an 18-wheeler to cause serious injury.

What they don't seem to recognize is that they're endangering everyone ELSE on the road in the process. If I screw up and hit another car with my MINI I'm going to do a lot less damage than if soccer mom screws up and hits another car with her gigantic 8-cylinder elephantine SUV. Sure, *she's* okay but the driver of the Prius she smashed into is dead.

 

If you screw up and hit someone on a motorcycle their dead and your OK in your MINI. So lets ban everything from the road thats different than what we drive (sarcasm) .

 

You make a very good point. There is a companion principle to private property rights that now needs to be introduced to the discussion: personal accountability. It is this principle that requires us all to take responsibility not only for our actions but also for the consequences of our decisions.

For example, when friends ask me if I feel safe in the MINI and wonder about the survivability of a crash involving a larger vehicle, I tell them I accept the risk. I think that the superior handling combined with the safety engineering more than offsets the risk of being mass-challenged. I tell them that I always keep my phone charged so that when there is a serious accident I can call 911 to report it, since I will have made good use of the nimble handling and exceptional braking qualities of my MINI and avoided direct involvement. In my opinion, avoiding a crash is infinitely preferable to "winning", especially since avoiding the crash works even when there are no other vehicles or pedestrians involved. I just don't choose vehicles with poor hadling characteristics if I can avoid it. It's a personal choice based on my values.

Incidentally this same type of reasoning keeps me from buying the sport bike I so desperately desire. In that case the risk of death or injury seems too great to me, so I abstain. However, it should be noted that I give nearly as much room for motorcycles (whose driver's I could easily cause great harm) as I do to 18-wheelers (who could just as easily do me great harm).

So whether someone chooses a sport bike, a MINI, a Camry or a Hummer, I'm fine with it. Should the same person choose to act in an irresponsible manner and cause harm to another by such action, they should be held accountable. Public highways are not playgrounds. Neither are they phone booths or beauty parlors. In the end, I don't much care what people drive, but I do care how they drive.

 

Apples and oranges. You can't compare a motorcycle to a car any more than a pedestrian to a motorcycle. If you go into the fast lane on foot, obviously you're willing to take extraordinary risks in the name of fuel efficiency (discounting the fact that this would be illegal). Similarly, if you ride a motorcycle at all you are obviously willing to take abnormal risks since motorcycles face far more danger from every day occurances (like potholes) than any car would.

Whereas the owner of a Prius is taking a safe, practical and efficient method of getting around town and is only endangered by people who needlessly and greedily drive overly heavy vehicles. An 18-wheeler is big and heavy because it is a necessary evil for getting cargo around and they recieve special training above and beyond a regular driver's license to do so. A single man with no cargo, no passengers and no intent of driving offroad with his 8600 pound Hummer is simply endangering people needlessly, far more than a 2600 pound MINI. It's just one more reason SUVs are bad. (Some SUVs anyway -- my previous car was a Saturn VUE. It only weighed 3100 pounds, though, being mostly plastic.)

The 8 cylinder, 6.0 liter Ford Excursion weighs 9200 pounds. You might as well fire a pistol randomly out the window while you're at it unless you have a reason for that kind of massive wrecking ball of death. Maybe you work for the zoo and have to haul elephants around, for example.



So there.

 

Motorcycles and cars share the roadway and have been known to collide with each other. My example was a valid one.

 

This thread is starting to get a little funny!!

 

That's one of the dumbest things I ever heard. Someday one of those hummer owners is going to do something alot worse to you than sticking out their tounge.

How do you know the hummer or whatever else they drive isn't used for a good reason? Can your mini go off-road? Climb rocks? Carry large objects? Tow heavy loads? Carry lots of people.
I'm glad we have a choice of vehicles to choose from... I also think you need to open your mind up and realize that people have different needs and tastes.

 

I don't think it even matters if they need the size or power. My MINI doesn't "need" to get to 85 in a flash, it doesn't need a radio, it doesn't need to look cool. But I want it to do all that. So the guy in the Hummer likes the look, wants to sit up high, good for him. I guess the Prius is the most practical efficient car out there now, so if we're headed to ultimate perfect practicality, where Hummers and Excursions are not welcome, then throw our little MINIs in the crusher too because we're not as efficient as many small cars. I hope all SUV drivers don't just look at me and assume I hate them because I'm in a tiny car.

 

Once when I was first considering selling my M3 and buying a MINI, a friend asked me (with some concern and great sincerity) what the MINI would "say" about me. My friend was just trying to help, and it got me to thinking about that question. After a few minutes I told my friend that it is my sincere hope that when other people see me in my MINI they will think simply: "That must be the car he wants."

You see, to me, a car is just a car. Even if it's a truck. It's not a political or socio-economic statement. It's a car. Or a truck. Whatever. I think it's unwise to attempt to infer much about the driver (it may not even be the owner!) of a car based on my notions of that car's worthiness for a particular purpose. It's a car; someone chose it over other cars, usually for a variety of reasons, not the least of which may be that they just like it. And that's good enough for me.

If it's not good enough for you, see how you like it when someone else tells you what you should be driving. As for me, I couldn't care less what other people think. And if they were to stick out their tongue at me, I would probably run off the road laughing.

 

LOL. Good one

Reminds me about the old lady and the parking spot ... no that a different story, not SUV story.

 

ROFL. Better one.

But wait, wannabe what? Isnt the hummer the best of the best?