MINI Clubman In-Person

Time flies... hard to believe this time last week I was up at the MINI dealership getting what has become my my annual oil change... this was supposed to be a "bonus" oil change since I had just now ticked past the 10,000 mile mark ... but since it also coincided with the one-year mark since my last oil change... well, no bonus!   I also had my airbag light repaired and an brake fluid flush... all of this "free" under my warranty...

Alas they weren't going to let me leave without earning some $$$... so they recommended a tire rotation and an alignment...  which were "voluntary" and thus brought charges.  I could hardly argue... I know these things should be done every so often and why not reward my Cooper with a little extra lovin' since it just turned 2 years old... and I guess they honeymoon is officially over since I allowed that birthday party to go by unnoticed on March 9th.   

One thing I was looking forward to my trip to dealership (besides meeting up w/ my old work friend) was checking out the new MINI Clubman.  I received an e-mail from the dealership in February that they had arrived... so I was anxious to see them in-person.  Here are a few pix:

Basically, it's a stretched out MINI... it's almost like you took a Cooper and taffy-pulled the back of it out just enough that it's noticeably longer.  I just took a good look at these pix this morning and I see I failed to get a good picture of the "club door" (duh!!), but you can sorta kinda see it in that first pic... where folks have that extra slim door (only on the passenger side) to get in the back seat.

The Clubman will still have to grow on me a bit more... I am certainly no car aficionado, so it didn't really seem all that different from a Cooper to me... so not quite sure how much of a cost/benefit there is to the "extra" space... but still a cool car... but it will certainly cause me confusion.  I have this tendency to yell out "Cooper!" (according to a certain somebody, in an autistic manner) whenever I see a MINI... so I'm am going to have to start looking closer to see if it's a Clubman instead.

Comments

[Jeff]

Cool! Thanks for posting the pics. I'm not in the market for a new car yet (maybe in a couple of years), but I keep saying that my next car will be a Mini of some sort. Of course that doesn't stop me from spending (too much) time "building" my own on their website, like I am right now... ;)