RE: Mini Crossman SUV Sketches Leak Out
Discussion
Twincam16 said:
What I find unexceptional and lacking substance about the MINI is its poor packaging. To my mind, packaging should be at the heart of a Mini design in the way that Lotuses are designed chassis-first with handling paramount, and Ferraris around motorsport-derived engines.
B*ll*x - if you want to cram four people into the smallest possible package while compromiding driving postion and passenger comfort in 2010, you look no further than the endless stream of sit-up-and-beg Asian sh*tboxes. There's no added value for Mini in emulating that, whatsoever. Mini still exists because of the 'Cooper' factor - being sharp, agile and generally fun in a car segment that at present has all but forgotten how to have fun - and that's the slant BMW rightly took in reviving the marque. Had Rover got its way, we'd have been lumbered with an 'innovative' car that mechanically was similar to a Smart (a HUGE dynamic compromise for the virtue of being short - which has no advantage to the buyer in itself 99.9% of times) while looking like a dead ringer for the Daewoo Matiz. I think the rose tinted glasses need to be taken off when looking at a BMW Mini. They're not as fast as a Astra VXR, similar spec' as the competition (if you add £4000 worth of extras), not as good looking as a Civic or several others I can think of, don't handle as well as a Clio 197 and so on. Someone asked me if the BMW Mini had a different name would I buy it then? For my money there a more refined, faster, sharper and better value cars out there. So no I wouldn't buy the BMW Mini if wasn't called Mini, but if the BMW Mini wasn't called the Mini it wouldn't look anything like the way it does so probably none of you would buy it either. Sat next to a BMW 100 for the same price it just doesn't make sense.
Robert060379 said:
I think the rose tinted glasses need to be taken off when looking at a BMW Mini. They're not as fast as a Astra VXR, similar spec' as the competition (if you add £4000 worth of extras), not as good looking as a Civic or several others I can think of, don't handle as well as a Clio 197 and so on. Someone asked me if the BMW Mini had a different name would I buy it then? For my money there a more refined, faster, sharper and better value cars out there. So no I wouldn't buy the BMW Mini if wasn't called Mini, but if the BMW Mini wasn't called the Mini it wouldn't look anything like the way it does so probably none of you would buy it either. Sat next to a BMW 100 for the same price it just doesn't make sense.
So it's slower than one, worse looking (in your opinion) than others and doesn't handle as well as another.I'd call that a good all round package, given that you can't name a car that's better as a whole...
That, and I'd be hard pressed to compare my 13.5 grand Cooper with an Astra VXR/Civic Type-R et al...
On my lease budget, it was this, a Renault Mégane 1.6, a Golf 1.4 TSI, an Astra 1.6, a Focus 1.6, a Civic 1.8 on plastic hub caps, an Avensis 1.6 or grovel and pay 10% (net) on top of my allowance to get into an Audi A3 1.6 like one of the colleagues did...
On my lease budget, it was this, a Renault Mégane 1.6, a Golf 1.4 TSI, an Astra 1.6, a Focus 1.6, a Civic 1.8 on plastic hub caps, an Avensis 1.6 or grovel and pay 10% (net) on top of my allowance to get into an Audi A3 1.6 like one of the colleagues did...
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