… seen on the road, today, heading up route 128 towards Gloucester.
A Sparkling Silver MCS (of course) with black roof and, I think, the red interior – we were in Margarets Audi so they had no idea I was interested, but we caught it up and passed it to have a better look … after a while the owner apparently decided to test its performance and flashed past us (and everyone else) doing probably 95 😉
From the rear, the R56 is very MINI like – the two large rear fog lights give the game away, and that nicely designed “bar” reversing light in the taillight cluster … from the front of course those yellow blobs in the headlights are too distracting, and from the side the side marker / vent is the most noticeable thing, looking SO much bigger than it should do …
But all that said, still quite an attractive vehicle on the road 🙂
TwistyBitz GP shirts
Another GP shirt arrived in the mail yesterday!
This latest design is from my friend Robert Ballard, and has been a long time coming due to various issues while Robert started up his new business …
The shirt front design incorporates an aerial view of the GP, neatly representing “I” in the “MINI” design (the roof number on the front is always GP2006, representing the year that these great cars were produced) – on the back you can custom order your GP roof number.
The same design is also available on a grey “ringer” shirt (third image); this shirt is a nicer quality material, it feels softer (it’s an Authentic Pigment shirt, while the back is made by Gildan).
You can also order a long sleeve shirt, where the custom GP roof number is printed on one sleeve (see here). All these shirts can be ordered from TwistyBitz (navigate to the store then choose “apparel”).
Subs – the story so far
I visited GPMINI today at Superior Systems, a custom audio shop in Peabody, to see how the creation of a speaker box was going, and to decide how it should be finished; what we have so far is a box which extends across the width of the car, positioned just in front of and below the GPs luggage bar – it’s front edge lines up with the front edge of the rear half of the car (where the rear seats would finish in a normal MINI).
The box will hold three 6″ JL Audio subwoofers, firing towards the back of the car; the DPSM 6×9 speakers, which normally fit in the MINIs rear speaker positions, will also be mounted, just behind the front seats and firing forward:
The DPSM speakers are of course driven by the DPSM amplifier; the subwoofers will be driven by an amplifier mounted in one half of the GPs rear storage area …
I originally thought about having the box painted to finish it, perhaps with some sort of design on it – but seeing the box in GPMINI made it clear that painting it wouldn’t work well, unless I did lots of additional custom paintwork both inside and perhaps also outside the car.
So the new plan will be to cover the box, perhaps in a “vinyl” material (similar to MINIs leatherette seating finish) either black or, if we can find an appropriate color material, in a finish which matches the red panels in the back of the GP.
More in a couple of weeks …
M&I / GBMINI 
