Quote:
Originally Posted by euromodder
Then comes the question : how often are those back seats actually used ?
Flip them down, and cargo space is a fair bit bigger.
When transporting kids, they usually love the Mini despite the back seats ...
For a lot of people, something the size of the Mini or a Fiesta is big enough for the largest part of their everyday use.
For the few % of time / miles that it isn't big enough : put a hitch on it, and get a trailer. Far more efficient than driving a vehicle that's sized for what is an a-typical use.
We seem to have forgotten that this is the size of car that many of our (grand)parents used for well, just about everything.
Not everyone drove a battleship back in the days ...
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My real beef with it is you can get cars with the same interior volume (or bigger) that not only cost less, but also weigh less and have smaller engine choices (Fiesta goes down to 1.2... Picanto/Spark/i10 start at 1.0 and have the same interior space), which does good things for economy. A MINI is porky for something so small. A Spark with more interior space weighs over 200 pounds less. My last micro-car test unit, with similar interior volume, weighs nearly six hundred pounds less.
This is not to say that the MINI is not a nice car. I've always loved driving them, and hey... if I could, I would.
But as a business case for selling small, high MPG cars in the US at a decent price, the MINI is not a good example, simply because it owes its success more to intangibles than anything else.