I also found that the more cars I test drove, the more I remembered why I love my MINI so much. The power, the cornering, the raw character and british cheek of it — there really is nothing else out there like it. Even the R56 MINI, as great as it is, lacks the darty splendor that is my Winston. But character aside, this makes the most financial sense. MINI will let me extend the warranty out to 100k miles for far less money out of pocket than purchasing another vehicle. When I look at the math and ask myself, “Would I buy this car for that money?”, the answer is a resounding “Hell yes!”

• Pepper White w/Black roof and bonnet stripes
• 16″ wheels / all-season tires
• Premium / Cold packages
• LSD
• Cloth seats, cream interior accents, piano black dash, interior chrome package
• Sat Nav (pricy, but it cleans up the center stack very nicely)
• Driving lights, rear fogs

See the full spec in the MINI Configurator (note: won’t work in Safari)

“What the heck is that?” I asked, pointing toward an open garage across the street.

“Ooh! That’s a Mini, son. C’mon, you won’t see one of these every day.” My dad replied.

Twenty yards from us was an open one-car garage with a faded blue classic Mini Cooper inside. In the dim light of the garage, I could just make out its squatty little stance and Union Jack roof graphic. I’ve inherited a big soft spot for british motors, as my dad is the original owner of a 1969 MGb GT. Dad talked to the owner about one thing or another, but I was transfixed by this groovy little car and wondered what the hell it was doing in northwest Louisiana. As we left, I was nothing but questions. I was sad to learn that emission standards and bumper height regulations meant that the Mini was only imported for a few years. Still, I was determined that someday I’d simply have to own one.

Flash forward. I’m done with school, working in advertising and design, and the CP+B branded MINI had captivated me even beyond the classic. Here was this car that by my calculations was a near mythical blend of efficiency, style, sport and cheek. What was more, I could just afford one. I’d done a nice long test drive in Kansas City and my mind was thoroughly made up. Unfortunately, I was up against a deadline.

It was 2006, and the car I’d fallen in love with was soon going to drastically change [I strongly felt] for the worse. The R53, Frank Stephenson’s Rover initiated, BMW polished masterpiece was being fiddled with by the bean counters at BMW. The design language of the new car, the R56, seemed to have a bizarre German accent and there were mechanical changes that seemed to go against common sense and good character. The raw roar of the supercharger was to be replaced by the whispy buzz of a twin-scroll turbo. The bulletproof iron block was now a fragile lump of aluminum. More alarmingly, BMW had opted for on-demand electric oil and water pump systems which just seemed like disaster waiting to happen. Then I looked at the interior changes. No. No. No! What the #@$% were they doing to my dream car? That tore it. If I was going to own a MINI, it was R53 or bust.

Long story short, I did some wrangling and managed to order my car — one of the last few hundred R53 MINIs built at Oxford — a dark silver Cooper S with a light silver roof and mirror caps, silver on silver anthracite interior, Premium/Sport/Cold packages, and 17″ rims. Todd Pearson hooked me up with a full custom front end with silver bonnet stripes and a silver hood scoop to match the roof. Gorgeous! I was in love. Not only was it a magnificent looking car, it was more powerful than I’d ever expected and cornered like nothing I’d ever experienced. No buyer’s remorse here. No sir.

Three years later, here I am. In August I come to the end of my three year MINI Select financing term and I have basically two options.

1. Refinance the balloon payment and keep the car.
2. Trade in/sell my MINI and buy/lease something else.

Three years ago when I bought the car, #2 was not an option. I was going to keep this car for 40 years, just like my dad has kept his MG. That was still the plan up until this last Thursday. Last Thursday I had what turned out to be a short in my dash wiring that gave me a false ABS/flat tire warning. Simultaneously, the thermostat housing catastrophically failed and the car nearly overheated. If I hadn’t been watching the gauges because of the ABS warning, I may not have noticed the temperature needle shoot skyward. Thankfully I did notice and shut the car off just as that light came on and avoided doing any damage to the engine.

A call to MINI Roadside Assistance and 90 minutes later, I received the fob to an R56 Cooper loaner car. I’ve had these Cooper loaners before and frankly, they’re dangerous. They’re dangerous because they’re so much more comfortable than my R53. Every time I drive one, I kinda want one. I ended up keeping this loaner for four days while Motorwerks mended my MINI. What was supposed to be only a strictly platonic business arrangement turned into a torrid affair. I fell in love with that confounded Cooper, on/off oil pump, automatic transmission and all.

Shit.

Not only did this mean that I needed to swallow quarts of my own bile from the comment sections of Motoringfile, but it meant that I needed to seriously reconsider my entire approach to car ownership. Am I willing to part with MY car for something better? Was I keeping my car for the right reasons? Is it even remotely practical or even possible to keep a 2006 MINI running for 40 years? It’s a pretty big brain shift going from “keep it forever” to “drive something else for the next three years or so and then change again.” What’s more, I am tempted hard by the Cooper, not just the Cooper S. The Cooper is so appealing in its little quirky way. The mileage is fan-frakking-tastic, the looks have really grown on me, it’d mean a much lower car payment than I make now, and bottom line: it’s a profoundly more comfortable car. I fit in it better and the ride quality is worlds better.

So yesterday, as I returned my loaner car and picked up my repaired MINI, I stopped by the sales department. They were kind enough to let me demo first a 2009 Cooper, then a 2009 Cooper S, both with manual transmissions. If I made a move away from my MINI, I really just can’t see myself driving anything else but another MINI.

In the Cooper, I worked my way through a small urban area, then zipped up and down 35W for a while. The Cooper actually reminds me a lot of my Vespa Grantourismo. The power is there, as is the speed, but it’s not a brute. It’s swift, but delicately so. When you really know the car, you can wring lots of speed out of it, but not by simply mashing on the pedal. In a lot of ways, the R56 Cooper feels about as powerful and quick as my R53 Cooper S, just minus the torquey power-on-demand I get from my supercharger. The Cooper is an extremely easy car to drive mated to the Getrag 6-speed manual gearbox, and especially so in town. “I could have a really good time in this car.” I thought to myself.

Next I drove the Cooper S on the same route. I’d previously driven an R56 Cooper S on a short demo in 2007 and frankly wasn’t impressed with it. It felt numb and seemed to lack that uncivilized, raw power I could get from my R53. Now that I’m much more used to the R56 platform, I was able to unleash the S for the turbocharged monster that it really is.

Wow! What had I done? Why did I drive this car? I should have known better.

The R56 MCS isn’t simply a little quicker than my R53. There’s a world of difference. The overboost, the giant swell of torque, the rally car growl and the comfortable sharpness of the handling were beyond a simple improvement compared to my R53. At one point I was going state prison fast as the car and I slingshot down the onramp and blurred past traffic. I wasn’t actually trying to go that fast, I just wanted to punch it and see what would happen. Wow. Did I say wow? Wow. Now I’m conflicted. Do I drive the dancer or the monster? I’m not sure how I feel about it yet.

Throughout this process, I’ve been rethinking my whole outlook on cars and my outlook on “stuff” in general. I think that many of us perceive that what we drive can say a lot about who we are if we want it to. A car or a bike or a scooter or how we dress — these are all statements we make about ourselves. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. When those things define us — define who we are — rather than the other way around, then that isn’t healthy, of course, and it’s an easy thing to fall into. We are always communicating something, whether we want to or not. The Prius owner often has as much to say in their purchase as the Hummer driver. They’re just saying different things. For a lot of people, they’re driving a car that says “I don’t care what I drive so long as I get there.” That’s a statement too, and a good one. And really, most people are just driving and don’t give a second’s thought about their car, their clothes, or their 401(k). That’s alright too, and healthy in its own way.

Being unemployed for several months this year put a lot of these sorts of PR notions into sharp perspective for me. What do I really stand for? What are my priorities? What am I communicating to other people intentionally and unintentionally? It’s easy to get all image conscience, but that isn’t the point. In reality, very few people will ever give a crap what I’m driving, and I’m not going to make my buying decisions based on those perceptions really at all. I just know they’re there and want to make sure that what I’m communicating about myself is above all else authentic.

I think the biggest lesson I learned from being unemployed was the value of enough. There is a profound freedom in having only the things your really need and a few of the things you really want. There is comfort in actually living within one’s means. My wife and I recently moved into a smaller apartment. Our previous place was simply more space than we needed and more expense than was worth paying. So we downgraded. We dropped two bedrooms, 1-1/2 baths, 500 square feet, and we absolutely love our new place. It’s just right for us and our mutts. In a lot of ways, I’m thinking that a change to the R56 Cooper might also be just the ticket. Then again, that Cooper S is one beautiful monster.

I’ve got until July or so to figure out this car conundrum. Do I hang on to my car — a car I really do love in spite of its subtle faults? Do I keep my monthly payments roughly the same and drive a beastly Cooper S? Do I save money, embrace “enough” and cruise ’round in a Cooper? Do I depart from MINI all together and lease a Honda Insight or a Jetta TDi? It’s amazing the emotional attachments we make to something as silly as a car, yet here I am, utterly conflicted. This is a fun problem to have, that’s for sure. Definitely a first world problem.

My car vs. Cooper vs. Cooper S vs. ???

Time will tell.

I think it’s very interesting that neither Michael nor db think that the Crossover Concept looks like a MINI. Though I definitely see the Infinity FX resemblance in the headlights and arse-lines, the front end of this concept, especially head-on, looks more like the classic Mini than even my R53 does in my opinion. I’m very curious to see how they further MINI-it-up in the production model.

Michael asked about target demographic and vehicle competition — “who is this car aimed at? Are they going for Ford Edge shoppers?” But as Todd points out, current MINI shoppers are cross-shopping all manner of things. Where the discussion ultimately turns — and where I whole-heartedly agree — is that the current MINI is premium and emotionally charged in a way few other cars are. There are plenty of other small, economical vehicles and definitely plenty of crossover SUVs, but very few cars with MINI’s mix of features, quality, performance, and style mojo. If this car comes to embody that, which I think it will, then there will be little doubt of its heritage. Great discussion guys.

WhiteRoofRadio Episode #271

The inevitable, negative discussion on MotoringFile began right away with the expected cries of horror. “Oh it’s so ugly!” “This is killing the Mini brand!” and other shrieks of flaming lament. Were MotoringFile not a growing ad hominem wasteland, I’d probably jump in the fray. But no thanks. Every time MINI unveils anything new or different, it’s met by this bandwagon of tripe. There are still a few sensible chaps hanging ’round and participating, but they’ve got more patience than I do at this point. Godspeed, good sirs. Knee-jerks aside, there are a couple of valid questions surrounding this new MINI model.

Does a MINI have to be small?
It’s tough to expand who you are as a car company when you’ve been named an adjective. Being called a MINI doesn’t simply imply being small, it practically demands it. The original Mini Cooper was a downright tiny car by today’s standards. The first generation of the “new MINI” was actually received very coldly by the die-hard fans of the classic car in Europe. Chief among their objections was how much bigger the BMW/Rover MINI was. This is the generation of MINI that I own (internal model R53), and it’s roughly the size of a BMW 3-series coupe, but shorter in the rear. At the time, it was the smallest production car available in the United States. Since then, with the newest, all-BMW generation of the MINI (the R56), the car has grown by a centimeter here and there, but also lost nearly 100 lbs in curb weight. Not a bad trade off. The R50/R53 fanboys (myself included at first) were not big fans of the R56 when it debuted [for us] on MotoringFile. A consistent gripe was that the car was a bit bigger. This “alarming” trend became an ongoing topic of contempt and fully exploded when MINI announced their plans to revive the extended wheelbase version of the Mini Traveler in the form of the MINI Cooper Clubman. Although the car grew neither in width nor height, the hemming and hawing began right away about how this size increase was “killing the MINI brand” and “Oh it’s so ugly I’m going to sell my Cooper S!” and on and on. I can’t help but wonder what these knee-jerks would do if MINI revived a couple of the other classic Mini models like the pickup truck or the Moke. Regardless, the Clubman has been a smash success.

Looking at the specs for the MINI Countryman-to-be, the MINI Crossover Concept, this new MINI will be approximately six inches larger in every key dimension when compared to MINI’s iconic Cooper hardtop coupe. This according to the official press release. That doesn’t exactly put it into H3 country. In fact, that means that it’ll only be marginally larger than the Clubman. I think that should still squarely count as small. Especially when you look at it in the context of other crossover SUVs on the American market — where this model is squarely aimed. The Ford Edge is nearly the size of the BMW X5. The Toyota Rav4 is much bigger than it used to be. The Mazda CX-7 is the size of their 6 sedan. None of these are small. But in looking at the MINI Crossover Concept dimensions, it’s not much bigger than the MINI we know today. Which means it’ll be very small in its market segment.

I suppose that doesn’t really answer the question though. Does a MINI have to be small in order to still be a MINI? WhiteRoofRadio.com interviewed Gert Hildebrand, head of design over at MINI in Germany, for their podcast during last year’s MINI United event in The Netherlands. They asked him specifically about a 4-door model and what size meant in terms of what a MINI is.

Gabe Bridger: “How big can a MINI product be and still be a MINI? Will you be able to create a MINI with four doors that retains the look and feel of what we see today?”

Gert: “MINI is a size of relation, it’s not an absoulte size of measurement…If you put a Rolls Royce in front of a Jumbo Jet, it is a MINI as well…So MINI per say as a size point of view is a size relation to something else.”

That’s a great answer, and it doesn’t get more from the horse’s mouth than that — from the actual professional in charge of design at MINI. According to Gert, context makes a huge difference in what makes something a MINI. To expand on that idea, I think that the MINI goes beyond simply being smaller than other cars in its class. Rather, I think it’s much more space efficient than other cars in its class. The original design spec for the Mini was to create a small car that maximized interior space, allowing a very small and economical car to be truly practical to drive. That meant pushing the wheels to the corners. That meant mounting its engine transversely (parallel to the front wheels). That meant an upright windshield — all to maximize interior space. Fifty years later, my car is the same way. Getting into it is like a magic trick. “Where did all this space come from?” So in that sense, a MINI SAV, or MINI pickup truck, or MINI personal hovercraft, becomes less about rote measurements and more about space efficiency.

There are two other themes that run deep to what MINI is all about. Economy, and especially performance. Motor Trend described the R53 as “an exotic sports car masquerading as practical transportation.” MINI pigeon-holes itself as a “premium small car” and I think that’s spot on. It’s not luxurious, but simply nice in a way that few other small cars are. There’s real care taken in the aesthetics. It goes beyond the toaster appliance experience of most economy cars. Simply put, a MINI’s got soul. It’s also got guts. My car goes like stink and corners like it’s got saw blades for wheels. Yet still gets north of 30 mpg. Not too shabby.

Second question. Is a MINI SAV in line with those values?
That’s the really philosophical question. I don’t think anybody who’s paying attention can say that a car with MINI’s premium outlook on features, safety, design, and economy, in a 4-door package, with AWD wouldn’t just sell like crazy in the US. It probably won’t be a big hit in Europe, but they’ll probably be lined up around the block to buy them here. This has led to accusations within the MINI enthusiast community that MINI is only making this car to pander to the poor tastes of American car buyers who’ve been brainwashed into this notion that they need off-road capability in their daily commute up the freeway.  But is that what MINI is really delivering here? Yes, it’s based on the X1 platform, but that’s simply based off the 1-series BMW sedan. Given the alternatives and MINI’s very cheeky nature, doesn’t a micro-SUV simply make more sense than some sort of small sports sedan? There are tons of those on the market. MazdaSpeed 3, VW Jetta GLI, Honda Civic Si Sedan, Mitsubishi Lancer, and those are just the sporty ones. That’s a pretty crowded market space. But what SUVs of this size range even exist in the US market? The Rav4? The FJ Cruiser? Kind of, but you can’t claim any sort of sports car performance out of either of them. They’re also both still bigger than this MINI SAV will end up being.

In general principle, I would say no, an SUV or SAV or whatever you want to call it doesn’t exactly jive with MINI’s heritage as small, sporty, stylish, economical transportation. But in execution, this MINI Crossover Concept pretty much has me sold on the idea. It’s completely MINI. In fact, my first reaction in seeing it was utter surprise at how much the big front grill looked like the classic Mini face. In a lot of ways, this car looks more like the classic Mini than the current iterations of the Cooper. So is this SAV a MINI? Abso-friggen-lutely.

The Crossover Concept itself
Obviously, the production car will be much more conservative than this. It won’t have the funky sliding door or the rear tilt gate, which is kind of a shame. It probably won’t have the modular rail up the center, and I would expect a more traditional bucketed bench seat in the rear to accommodate a 5th passenger. It certainly won’t have the Ferengi mind control ball as the dash interface, but I expect it will have an interior unique from the Cooper and Clubman. I do hope it retains a center-mounted instrument panel. Overall, I think it’s just slick as can be. I picture one with a kayak on the roof rack, the diesel engine growling out massive amounts of torque, towing a trailer with a pair of scooters on it. Sweet. I would love to have one of these. Sadly, it’ll probably be north of $30k to spec one out like I’d want it. There are a lot of very nice cars in the $30k range. Lots of E46 M3s to be had. But if I got to where I wanted to haul stuff and people, or felt like I needed AWD to navigate the frozen north of Minnesota, the MINI Crossover would definitely be on my short list.

Check out the full unveil over at MotoringFile.

Listen here to Gabe and Todd give their design analysis on WhiteRoofRadio