Month: March 2004

Also while in England, I had the chance (thanks to Clive, a colleague of my Dad) to be driven in a Smart Roadster. This cute car is much smaller than a MINI and arguably just as much fun:

Personally, I think that with the Smart Roadster priced similarly to the MINI Cooper S, but feeling like it performs only like the MINI Cooper, I will stick with the car I have now – anyway if Smart does come to USA (as they claim will happen in 2006), they will not be bringing anything as small as this! Their recent press release suggests we will see “a smart utility vehicle designed specifically for [the US] market”. For more info, visit this site.

We also tried to visit the Lotus factory while we were in England, in the hope of seeing another “miniature but cute” car, the new Lotus Elise; unfortunately the factory closes early on Friday so we could not tour (and anyway, cameras were banned so this pic is courtesy of Google!)

Although GBMINI stayed home in America, I recently had the chance to visit the John Cooper Works in south east England. There were a lot of MINIs and Minis there, in various states of upgrade:

Talking to Mike Cooper and other people working there was very interesting – as was seeing MINIs in various states of disassembly as they are upgraded. The successful John Cooper Challenge, which gives people the chance to race & compete at a sensible cost in upgrade MINI Coopers, will this year include 200hp upgraded MINI Cooper S vehicles which should make the racing even more entertaining – shame we won’t see it covered in USA!

Blink and another of my favourite web sites gets a name change! Bridger.us/mini has changed to motoringfile.com which does not, yet, work for me but if it works for Gabe then fine! A little sad that Gabe cannot risk a web site with “mini” in the title; once again thanks to BMW Lawyers.
Personally I always loved the suspected connection to “Mr Bridger” who was in ultimate control of the original Italian Job movie:

Gabe has made sure to carry the style and (of course) the content over to the new motoringfile site – all I have to do is update my link(s) and keep reading his site!