“Club”(man) night at MINI of Peabody

Posted on by Ian C.

I’m sure many MINI dealerships around the country will be promoting the launch of the bigger-than-normal MINI Clubman, and MINI of Peabody is no exception …
clubman.jpg

On this MINI2 thread, Paul Taylor writes:
… Our upcoming launch party for the Clubman on Friday, February 15th; the time will be from 7:00 p.m. ’til 9:30 p.m., in response to those that need time after work to travel and attend. It will be held at our 7 Centennial Drive, Peabody location, which is convenient to RT 128.
The theme will be a “Club” atmosphere, with a special show, and DJ.
For all of you that RSVP, we will have special “goody bags”. Of course the event will be catered by our usual excellent catering company; food & refreshments for all.
If you haven’t attended one of our events, ask around….we know how to throw a party!

That’s true, Paul!
For previous events at the Centennial location, see: Get Into It, R56 unveiling, and the recent OctoberFast 2007.

If you’re interested in seeing the Clubman in the flesh – or just hanging out with MINI owners, and enjoying food and entertainment, be sure to attend 🙂

MINI USA sales figures

Posted on by Ian C.

You might know that I’ve been maintaining a webpage showing MINI USA sales, since the car was introduced back in 2002. The information comes from BMW / MINI press releases, and unfortunately these have recently been “simplified” to make life easier for the press – apparently they were confused by all the different model variants and/or unable to use calculators!

So in the past, as shown in the sales figures, separate figures were provided for the “first gen” R50/53 MINIs, the new R56 MINIs, and the Convertibles – all in both S and non-S guises; then in October 2007 the press information was reduced to just three numbers – one for Cooper, one for Cooper S and one for Convertibles (both S and non-S versions!)

Thanks to support from MINI USA staff, I’ve got the S / non-S breakdown for the Convertibles for the last three months of 2007, and I’ve assumed that all Cooper / Cooper S sales were of R56 MINIs (there were very few R50/R53 sales in September/October 2007) – this has allowed me to basically provide complete sales figures information for 2002 through 2007, including a chart:

MINI USA sales chart

 

It’s clear from the chart that after a five month burst of high sales since the R56 was introduced, there’s been a significant drop-off – but back down to what would be “normal” sales figures before the R56 was introduced. Of course with more dealerships now in USA, the lower sales figures are probably not what is wanted; they might be a reflection of the Clubman being brought into the Oxford manufacturing plant, or the result of slower winter sales – either way, it will be interesting to see what the next few months shows …

Please note: In the future, I will be limited to the simplified press release data. Sorry!

Too cold for an R56?

Posted on by Ian C.

It was 10f when I left for work this morning – and that’s basically where it stayed!
I took GBMINI to Sublime Restorations so I’m driving GBMINI#5 tonight … and when I started the car, she started fine but the clock was gone, and there was no trip information. Curiously the date was correct, while the time had vanished.
Anyway, note the exclamation mark above (the triangle to the left of 000.0 – not very visible in picture, sorry) … calling up “CHECK INFO” gave a display on the NAV screen:

And pressing the joystick (which I didn’t do but apparently GBMINI#5 got fed up while I was taking pictures, and “pressed” it for me) gives a description which very (un)helpfully says “turn off unnecessary electrical consumers … in case of repeat occurrence, have the system checked by your MINI dealer”:

Meanwhile, GPMINI – with it’s smaller than normal weight-saving battery – had no trouble with battery power, during the same cold, also un-driven due to our Florida trip. I hope this issue doesn’t recur …

UPDATE:
Something else now … yesterday the R56 stalled three times when initially moving it; I assumed it was because the brakes & tires were frozen from sitting in the cold / wet for a week.
But this morning, it again stalled twice when I tried to go; I had to give it LOADS of revs to have enough power to move without stalling – and this was on a flat driveway with no overnight icing!
Apparently GBMINI#5 has no power when it’s cold; for the first few minutes you could feel that it wasn’t happy to run, sluggish and under-powered.