Mini puts best foot forward with new site

Mini Cooper, via ad shop Butler Shine Stern, has launched a site that calculates the "carfun footprint" of various vehicles. The point, of course, is that the Mini proves to be lots more fun and environmentally friendly than its competitors. (Whoa, I didn't see that coming.) My Honda Civic placed 63rd out of 197 cars. I'll concede that sharpening pencils is more fun than driving a Civic. But my particular vehicle is quite green, if only because I never throw out the garbage that collects under the seats. (I'm hoping the stuff growing between the brake pedal and the floor mats is macrobiotic, or at least non-toxic.) The Mini test is totally bogus, anyway, because the most fun vehicles of all—the Batmobile, the NASA Lunar Rover, James Bond's Aston Martin, Speed Racer's car, the Partridge Family bus, Herbie—aren't among the choices on the site. Cars that shoot missiles are pretty damn fun. My Mother the Car, however, is a real nag. Anyway, I found a forum where the Civic wins handily: the U.S. News & World Report car-safety rankings. The Mini scored an 8.6—a veritable death box compared to the Civic and its 9.8. Bottom line: Survival is the most fun of all.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

August 11, 2008 in Gianatasio | Permalink