Rarely do I attempt to expound upon my fine colleagues' work. But as Dan Michel had only a few paragraphs in the June '09 issue in which to convey the charm and instant camaraderie of the Mini-Cooper, I, as biased owner and not objective journalist, would like to add a few points.
1. We not only toot our little horns at each other, we park side by side whenever possible. We do this because Minis look so cute in a row. And as my Mini is British racing green with a white roof, I will go to extraordinary lengths to park next to a red Mini with a white roof in the month of December.
2. That color thing matters. I once worked in a rather stuffy bureaucratic place, and when I wrote "British racing green" on the parking-pass form, the secretary dryly informed me that "green" would do.
3. We fall for Mini's marketing schtick and lingo because we deep-down, we agree with it. "Motoring" is an entirely different experience from "driving."
4. I am not being paid to write this.
5. The hood release is on the right, an hommage to the car's British left-hand-drive origins that confounds every mechanic I've met.
6. We grow weary of all of you leaning on the gas pump, staring at the hose in our hand and asking, "So, how much she get?"
7. The Mini's single fault: It boasts five beverage holders and not a damned one of them works. How hard can it be to hold a beverage, you ask. Well, two are indentations inside the glove compartment's door, and once I've unhinge it and carefully placed by rootbeer float in its circle, all my maps, manuals, and moist towelettes cascade forward, knocking my beneverage onto the once-leather seat where it puddles in the indentations left by the dog's claws. (He sits in front so he can arch his neck toward the moon roof.) Two other beverage holders are fit only for quarters or demitasse. And the fifth, the one I perforce must use, is practically in the back seat, which means when I reach for it my passenger either thinks I'm making a role-reversed pass or grabs the wheel in justifiable panic.
8. We are secretly, shamefully thrilled to be made by BMW, and we gladly nibble the crumbs of the free pastries provided in the BMW service center's waiting room.
9. Back to my paeans of praise: The coolest thing of all is the Mini's odometer, which is placed, not right in front of the steering wheel where anxious drivers would fixate on it, but casually off to the right. It is marked only in 10-mile increments, so you glance over and say, "I'm going about 70"--none of this persnickety three-miles-over-the-speed-limit stuff.
10. The reason the nonchalance works is that it's very hard to blare your siren at such a cute little frog of a car.
11. A Mini once beat a Porsche at Gateway.
12. Don't tell the cops.
13. Do tell the guys at the service center, who have a definite sense of humor. One begged me to give birth to a baby girl, just so I could name her Minnie and she could be Minnie Cooperman.
14. The fact that I considered it should tell you more than numbers 1-11.
--Jeannette Cooperman, Staff Writer
