Id love one as a project/second car was just going to mention a VTEC but see its mentioned above Pic from that link:This pic makes me happy lol
The orignal minis are awesome although I prefer beetles I would still love to own one. (Just saw you're in peterborough - theres a great pearlescent one in farcet that I have spotted around town a few times )
I love the style of the older ones (esp a cooper 500....) but I have so much trouble with my back I just can't get into one now We have a second generation (turbo not supercharger) Cooper S (BMW) now which I get to have a good play about with at the weekends as my wife uses it for work on weekdays and it is awesome.
Agreed. I'm 6'1" and I have plenty of headroom. One of my colleagues is a few inches taller than me and he drives one, too. I get a quite a few people asking me how I fit, but they're all surprised to learn that MINIs have a decent amount of passenger space. They're even more surprised when they find the child seat in the back. Who knew, right? I really want to get a classic Mini and fix it up, but like Scirocco I just don't have the time or resources at the moment. For now, my 2008 Cooper S will have to do. And it does. On a related note I'm not really thrilled with all the new directions that MINI is taking the brand, although my wife thinks the Countryman is cute.
Someone else is after the old beaten 970 S chassis I'm going for, I hope it doesn't turn into a bidding war... I can't afford to go much higher at the moment.
I saw the Countryman a few weeks back, and there is seriously nothing 'mini' about that car at all. What really annoys me about the BMW Mini, is that not only is it so much bigger than the old model, but it's bigger than pretty much every car in its class. I also fail to see how when the Mini was designed all those decades ago, they could fit an awful lot into a small package, yet the new version (especially with todays tech) is so much larger. They proved it back in the day, so what's different now? I understand the need for airbags and other various safety equipment, but like I said before, there are other cars on the market with all those things that are much smaller. All I'm saying is that when BMW took on the Mini brand, they had some pretty big (or maybe... small) shoes to fill, and I strongly believe that the design brief should have insisted that the car was the same dimensions as the old model, with the same sort of price tag. The Mini was never supposed to be a premium player, not the base model anyway.
And you can keep two diapers in the trunk! We have test drove mini's twice and each time have decided they are too impractical, two plasticky inside and just a bit 'meh' really. Classic mini all the way.
Arr, the other guy who decided to jump on the 970 S chassis I was after put in a fairly high offer and managed to get it this morning. Looks like I'm back to looking around the local scrappers again for another classic mini chassis to rebuild. :\
It was a bit disappointing to discover this thread wasn't about girls in short skirts... First three cars I owned were Minis... all awesome... even the one where you could look down and see the road between your feet on the pedals.
I do love the older Mini, I quite like the new Mini as long as its one of the many hot versions. The frightening thing is that classic Mini's are getting smaller and smaller by comparison with quite a lot of new cars being bloody huge. It must be a scary thing to be driving one in the states, I bet you can't even see the window line of most SUVs
I suspect part of the reason for the new series of Minis being much bigger than the original is all the anti-pollution and safety equipment it has to include. Driving around a classic Mini in Denver with all the huge SUVs surrounding it would be SCARY!
I used to like them, but around where I live all the Mini drivers I've encountered are absolutely useless (usually young girls flying around at rediculous speeds). That's kind of put me off them.
