February 18, 2008
New Clubman from MINI Makes Its Debut in San Francisco
Our corporate overlords are working weekends just to get the word out about the new Clubman from MINI. Instead of zoom zoom, it's now "zig zag zug". Larger photo here.
We're used to seeing MINI Coopers and Cooper convertibles zigging and zagging all over the Streets of San Francisco. So MINI is using those two models to help introduce their new station wagon version called the Clubman (or Clubperson or Clubpersyn, your choice). In MINIspeak, the words zig and zag are naturally followed by zug. The new model is 10 inches longer than a regular Cooper -- maybe that's the right size for you.
Of special interest to urban city-zens is the right-side-only ClubDoor, which aids passenger loading. It looks like this. Having this clamshell door on the sidewalk side is good for us Yanks, but not so good for people who live in countries where they drive on the wrong side of the road. Like Londonists, for example. These days, with all those places that have switched over, car owners of the world mostly drive on the right, mostly. Good for us.
Global hegemony is finally paying off.
| 
Hmmm... That ClubDoor would only work when parking on two-way streets. In the one-way paradise of SOMA, passengers of the "Zug" would be out of luck 50% of the time.
Ideally, they'd have it on both sides of the car, but that might affect structural integrity too much.
or they could just add real doors and make it longer still. less sporty-looking tho.
and of course,
ride a bike, problem solved.
I'm holding out for the Chevy Volt for my next car purchase ... buy American. :)
The last time i saw a Volt, it was powered by three conventional lead-acid car batteries and was shod with the most ridonkulous-looking Michelin "Green-X" tires that would be illegal to use on the road.
it's easy for me to forget that the Volt is a show car.
it would be nice if gm could build the volt the way they say they probably will.
I thought the Clubman was out by now, but yeah I dig it. No AWD though, which is dumb.
Believe they officially went on sale Saturday, which is when the three car rolling advertisement was seen driving around the Castro.
Over the next several months, the dealership in S.F. will get about 1 car per week to sell to the buying public. Other dealerships are about 30 miles away from SF so it'll take a while before you see a bunch of them.
I hope they paid you to post this.
It's funny, the bag of "cash" they gave me turned out to be filled with nothing but newspaper bundled and cut out to the size of folding money.
I'm going to contact a barrister (or a solicitor?) and then sue them in London. Wish me luck!
Good luck.
Well, all right. The new deal is that it's tough for marketers to break through and get the attention of the kids these days.
Some people find this kind of novel advertising of interest. Readers responded to this photo much more than RainbowFallingOnObamaRallyChurch or LastPhoneBoothInSF anyway.
The Mini is bigger and 500 lb heavier than my 1984 Honda Accord was. Gets slightly worse mileage too. Sheesh what passes for a "small" car these days. At 2689 lb curb weight it's only 500 lb shy of my current ride, a 99 CR-V truck.
An 84 Accord dwarfs any kind of MINI Cooper. The MINI is smaller.
Newer cars tend to have lots of heavy safety and emissions equipment - the kind of stuff car makers didn't worry about as much a quarter century ago.
Compare the Civic, if you'd like - it's about the size that the Accord used to be.
"Buy American"? the only thing buying american gets you is that the profits go into American CEO's pockets. The cars and the jobs that go with them, are all manufactured overseas.
The only thing America produces are rich executives. If you want your "buy American" dollars to actually go into american pockets, you'd be wise to "buy Japanese."
Anyone see the smartcar? www.smartusa.com