“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 🙂

The U.S. Virgin Islands

Posted on by Ian C.

This is the view from our room, perched right at the top of a steep hill on the ocean’s edge, in the Point Pleasant Resort on St. Thomas, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean! The downside of this view was the incredibly steep roads and paths to get anywhere in the resort – after one day we rented a car so that we could get around! Another reason was that the resort had no restaurants offering breakfast, only one for lunch (and with not a very wide menu choice); I supposed we could have cooked, since our room had a kitchen …


Here’s our room, from a nearby road – you can see how high it is (our room is top right on the rightmost building):

 

St. Thomas was quite strange; it’s single main town catered primarily to cruise ship tourists, offering loads of jewelry shops! Elsewhere the island was all hilly with steep twisty roads, regular chances to bottom out part of the car, and a cross-section of different homes, run down areas, etc … but the views were so spectacular that any downsides were forgotten!


Another highlight was touring Coral World, with it’s sting rays, sealions, lorikeets and an underwater viewing area:


Then there was the amazing sight of watching weather roll in across the ocean – here it’s raining over part of St. Johns (another nearby U.S. Virgin island):


And, eventually, we found a nice (but tiny) beach where we could swim in the warm blue-green waters of the Caribbean ocean:

 

 

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!