Tag Archives: Mini

Green Cars at the 2008 Greater L.A. Auto Show

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Are any of these cars truly green?

The Greater Los Angeles Auto-Show, Green Car Ride and Drive Event, November 20th 2008.

Participating Vehicles

  • Audi A7 TDI (clean diesel)
  • BMW 335d (diesel)
  • Chevy Equinox Fuel Cell
  • Chrysler Aspen (hybrid)
  • Dodge Ram 3500 (biodiesel)
  • Ford Fusion Hybrid
  • Honda FCX Clarity (fuel cell)
  • Mercedes-Benz ML320 BlueTEC SUV (diesel)
  • Mercedes-Benz GL320 BlueTEC clean (diesel)
  • Mercury Mariner (hybrid)
  • Mini E (electric)
  • Mitsubishi i-MiEV (electric)
  • Nissan X-Trail FCV (fuel cel)
  • Saturn Vue 2 Mode Hybrid
  • Smart fortwo
  • Volvo C30
  • VW Jetta TDI (diesel)
  • VW Touareg TDI (diesel)

I decided not to focus on any of the diesels and clean diesels, because it’s still diesel and it still stinks, even if you use much less these days and less smoke makes it out the end of the tailpipe.

Bio diesel has such a large eco-footprint that it’s barely worth pursuing. It does not help the environment whatsoever with it’s current method of growth, harvesting and distribution.

The hybrids use less fuel than similar non-hybrids, but the additional cost on the price tag requires a lot of high mileage driving to recover the cost, and you still need to burn gas in order to use them.

Small and light cars such as the Smart Fortwo, and the four seater Volvo C30 are normal cars, they just save money and the environment by being small. They are not the giant enormous cars that most Americans are convinced they need to transport one little person two miles down the road.

Fuel cell cars would be great if the hydrogen was not produced by dirty sources and delivered by dirty tanker trucks. But they are, so they are not so far in any position where they can be said to making the Earth any greener. It’s coal for goodness sake!

So that just leave all-electric. Again, most electricity is generated by the burning of coal so it’s tempting to rule these out as well, but with more wind and solar power coming online, then electric cars get greener all the time. The batteries are not exactly eco-friendly when they reach their end, but electric cars are still undeniably cleaner than combustion vehicles.

Mitsubishi and BMW have presented two real, in-production, practically non-prototype, definitely non-concept cars which are true all-electric cars.

Mitsubishi has their i-MiEV, a small car with four doors and room for four inside, and BMW has an all-electric version of their very successful Mini, except this one is a two seater.

The iMiEV has an onboard charger so you can plug into your normal home’s outlets, or into a quick charger, a few of which can be found in most cities. The car uses very efficient electric motor and high energy density lithium-ion batteries. It’s as simple as that and it’s ready to go, with more than enough range for most people who drive each day and return home each evening.

The BMW mini with it’s single passenger seat is clearly a bit less practical, but nevertheless, it’s fabulous and more fun than most two-seaters that are stinking around wasting fuel for no good reason.

These two very real cars are almost here now and setting the stage for our inevitable path to all-electric cars. All this other stuff, bio-diesel, clean diesel, normal diesel, hydrogen, gasoline hybrids, etc. is just a diversion. We have to head towards the electric light at the end of the smoky tunnel.

Of course there are others. To name a few there are:
Tesla Motors Electric Roadster (A Lotus Elan based two seater)
BYD (China) E6 Electric Car
Miles XS500 (retro-ugly small electric sedan)
Subaru R1e
Tango (George Clooney has one of these dragster-fast single-seaters that resemble giant work-boots)
Wrightspeed X1 (insanely fast street legal electric racing car)

So how do these two electric cars at the L.A. Auto Show event feel? How do they drive?

The BMW Mini E

The BMW Mini E has a very impressive driving range of “up to 150″ miles. It accelerates very quickly, going from 0 to 62 MPH in 8.5 seconds, and in such a way that gives you the kick right at zero, no delay as with combustion engined cars.

The Mini’s top speed is 95 MPH and it;s lithium ion batteries can be recharged from any standard power outlet. However the specially installed wall box can fully recharge the car from dead to full in 2.5 hours.

Releasing the “gas pedal”, which of course is no such thing, causes dynamic deceleration, meaning the slowing of the vehicle charges the batteries by using the motor as a generator.

But here is the catch, at least for now. Much like the old GM EV1 immortalized in the film “Who killed the electric car”, the minis will initially only be available on a one year lease with an extension option, and in three of the fifty United States only.

The driving experience in normal slow traffic conditions is much the same as that in the standard BMW mini, except you don’t hear an engine or an exhaust note or feel the rumble of a combustion engine. It is of course extremely quiet, the only obvious sound being that of suspension, wind, etc. The main difference in feel is when you take your right foot of the go pedal and sense the regenerative braking effect that helps give this car it’s impressive range.

The biggest difference visually comes when you look over your shoulder. Instead of the familiar rear seat of the Mini and Mini Cooper, there is a black box between you and the trunk space. As I said earlier, this is a fun car to drive, and let’s not forget it’s main points, no engine, no exhaust, no gas tank, no emissions.

The Mitsubishi i-MiEV

A good looking small car with plenty of room for two in the back, but nevertheless unconventional looking, as it can be since there is no engine. The rear end does look a bit odd, but there’s no reason it should look like a car with an engine.

There are about 30 or so of these running around Tokyo. But as the promotional video shows, at least one has been driven around in the Los Angeles area and it may well be the same on on the floor at the Auto Show today.

Again this car rests it’s hopes on lithium ion batteries. They are clearly the most promising rechargeables on the automotive landscape this year, and the i MiEV has 22 of them at the bottom of the car.

A good car to compare this to is the Mitsubishi i Turbo, which has a three-cylinder gasoline combustion engine. But the i MiEV’s direct-drive, no-tranmission electric motor will take it from 0-60 MPH in just under 9 seconds and the top speed is around 82 MPH.

But there are two driving modes, Sport and Eco. The latter takes away the racy performance, but increases the range. Even in Eco mode, it’s not a slow car and it’s still faster than the tiny cars on the road. Mitsubishi say the range is “up to 100 miles”. It may or may not achievable, but considering that Chevrolet is asking for billions of taxpayer dollars to be so gracious as to give us an expensive Chevy Volt with a pathetic “up to 40 mile range”, I say hats off to our patriotic friends at Mitsubishi. They are America’s friends, not the lunatics and national saboteurs over at General Motors.

However, with real-world range of around 60 miles, (using climate control and enjoying the occasional burst of gratifying speed), and a full recharge that takes 14 hours on a normal domestic outlet or about an hour on the wall mount, this car may not have enough energy capacity to be considered as your one and only daily driver. But it’s getting there and Mitsubishi have done a fine job using todays latest technology.

The i MiEV is not exactly here yet. It may be generally available to anyone in Japan in about a year in late 2009.

Is it time yet?

The consumer looking for an electric car in 2008 and 2009 might be best advised to wait, and in the meantime, lighten up on that right foot and drive in such a way as to conserve fuel. Eventually, range will improve and more electricity will be coming from non-polluting sources such as wind, and less from coal. Then we will be able to watch as more and more cars go all-elecric.

Pop! Goes The Mini Cooper Culture

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By Mike Marino

The British Are Coming! The British Are Coming!

Those madcap ale drinking, pub hopping bloody Brit Redcoats ain’t just figments of the imagination Mate! Nor are they strangers in a strange land to the landscape of American history. Over 200 years ago, a perplexed Paul Revere rode deep into the bosom of the dark of the midnight countryside to warn of imminent peril and invasion by the forces of King George, by George!

In due time, another George, ours, who went by the name of Washington, took careful aim for the royal jewells, gave them a swift kick in the royal cahones, and sent them packing north to Canada, eh, and back across the big pond to Jolly Olde England. The Americans, now victorious in revolution, would not fear nor suffer another British Invasion ever again…well, that is until the British Invasion of Mods, Rockers and Pop Culture hit our shores like a behemoth tidal wave with a rock n’ roll backbeat in the 1960′s!

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!

The Fab Four…The Rolling Stones…The Who! Who? British Music and moptop haircuts sucker punched American youth culture with powerful pop culture blitzkrieg and brought it to it’s sociological knees with a style of dress and a new code of conduct that would propel us into a whole new universe. A pop universe of James Bond, shaken, not stirred. Carnaby Street and Mary Quant, Dusty Springfield, Mods Aplenty and Pussy Galore. We were high on hiked up mile high mini-skirts and jazzed on jacked up go-go bootsl. Our hearts pumping in overdive, and without question, London proved, once and for all, that indeed, England swings like a pendulum do!

John, Paul, George, and Ringo, the Four Horsemen of the Beatles Apocalypse, made an indelible impression on all of us, similar to a tire iron being raked across the skull of some hapless victim in a dark alley in Detroit. However, it was an unlikely little motoring machine that not only came to personify that era more than anything else, but also flexed t’s design muscle and became a major bonafide pop icon. A chrome-magnon pop star in it’s own right with a cult following to match that of the Grateful Dead. That major, was a mini. A Morris Mini to be exact.

The red-dread, dread-of-Red ideological ice age that defined the meltdown nuclear Cold War era had produced a politicaly unstable behemoth of a glacier that was advancing and laying waste to everything in it’s path. That same instability would eventually knock stability off it’s pedestal and produce a plethora of petrol panic at the gas pump. The growing, out of control crisis in the Suez Canal region in the later part of the decade was to become the bravo-British-bravado version of the shootout at the OK Corral in the American Wild Child Wild West. This time those madcap Earp’s and Clanton’s were replaced by mysterioso shrouded-in-mystery Egyptians and pip-pip-cheerio stiff upper lip and all that Brits. Plain and simple, the sixshooter of oil consumerism had run out of bullets, and gas rationing, once again, was becoming a British way of life.

Clearly, a petrol saving, more miles to the gallon messiah of a car was needed to meet this crisis headon and to preach the gasoline gospel, and it was the vehicular virgin birth of a BMC classic that rose to the challenge. In 1952, two separate motor companies, Austin and Morris, merged in a marriage of metal to form the British Motor Corporation. BMC raced to meet the design needs of the growing gas crisis, and by 1958 had test driven and sent to production the design that would come to symbolize British Culture in the 1960′s.

The underwraps mini wonder wagon was unleashed in 1959 in two separate versions. The Austin factory in Longbridge gave birth to the Austin Seven, “The Incredible Austin”, while the Morris plant in Cowley delivered the Morris Mini, “Wizardry on Wheels”. Both destined to evolve into the singular, all powerful and rally race fashionable Mini-Cooper by 1961.

Power and muscle were not hallmarks of the original design under the motor meister, Sir Alec Issigonis. Born in Turkey in 1906, Issigonis went to work at Morris Motors in 1936 after studying engineering in his new adopted homeland, England. His idea was simply to design a car that was safe for the public and affordable for the masses, following in the footsteps of the vehicular visionary, King Henry the Ford, and his immensly popular Model T, and also the popular German Volkswagen. According to legend, the original sketch of the Mini design was drawn on a restaurant table cloth.

The Mini, at first was merely a “housewifes car” fit only for toodling to the grocery or scooting about town. In 1961 it got a high performance injection of John Cooper vroom and zoom, and it was, not only off to the races, but also well on it’s way to becoming the fashion accessory of the decade! The Mini sold a respectible 20,000 units in 1959 B. C. (Before Cooper), but by mid decade in 1965 it had topped the 1,000,000 mark milestone for units sold!

John Cooper had a formidable background in high performance motoring. Born in 1923, John and Cooper, Sr. formed the Cooper Car Company in the aftermath and shadow of WWII, and by 1948 were building serious rear engine racing monster mo-sheens. The 1950′s were the definitive age of the Chrome-magon. Racing was taking the world by the short hairs, and Cooper & Co. were making machines that were leading the perfomance pack on the racing circuit and in short time made it the must have car of the speed loving motoring public. John had already made a high octane impact on the autoworld, but the heavy metal planets were all in perfect alignment, and the best was yet to come when he put his expertise to work on the marvelous Mini. It was from this fornication of form and design that the pre-eminent rally sportser of the times would emerge…The Psychedelic Petroleum Prince of the Proletariat…The Legendary Mini Cooper!

The decade of the 1960′s saw the super duper Cooper take on and kick asphalt in a variety of key races that proved her metal once and for all. The Mini Cooper won consecutive Monte Carlo Rally’s, the Tulip Rally’s in ’62 and ’64, the Alpine Rally in ’63 and 25 other prestigious races out and about the European continent. The original Cooper’s came with a 4 speed tranny, go from 0-60 in 12.9 seconds, 0-100 in 20 seconds and best of all, got an amazing 30 MPG! Racing Coopers however, along with the pedigree led a hard life on the circuit and many had to be reshelled continually.

The Cooper also had a low center of gravity for cornering, and the Cooper S of 1963 – 1967 had wider wheels than a stock Cooper. The Rally Rear Package came with straight through exhaust, mini lite wheels, roll bar, twin fuel tanks and a lightweight stick on lisence plate. Other inclusions where woodrim moto-lita steering wheel, Halda trip meter, tachometer, stop watches, map light and a fire extinguisher!

Mods needed rods and that damn little Cooper fit the bill and soon anyone who was anyone was sporting a Mini Cooper, from The Beatles to Peter Sellers. Michael Caine even drove one into the realm of fame and infamy in the film “The Italian Job” in 1969. The Mini Cooper was king, and as anyone knows, it’s good to be the King!

As the Psychedelic Sixties began to fade away in a bag of seeds and stems, there were efforts afoot (Gadzooks!) to kill the little Mini beastie, but it kept selling in spite of those efforts. Cries of “It’s Alive” could still be heard loud and clear at the car dealerships and showrooms, as the resiliant little creature refused to go down without a fight. Until the ’80s.

As the decade of “Me” dawned on the horizon the Mini began to decline into it’s own sunset on the automotive horizon, but a new company that was now producing the Mini was trying to keep itself afloat on the horsepower ocean and not sink like the ill-fated Titantic. That company, Rover, came out with themed editons to tap into the reigning motherlode of nostalgia and by 1990 Japan was eating them up like Godzilla beast-feasting on nuclear power plants!

Sir Alec passed on to piston paradise in 1988 and John Cooper crossed the quarter mile into horsepower heaven in the year 2000 at the age of 77. In 1994, Rover was acquired by BMW and today they produce and export three different models to the motoring masses. It might be a Mini but you can’t judge a book by it’s cover…the Mini Cooper Slogan sums it up best…

“You Don’t Need A Big One To Be Happy!”

Mike Marino is a freelance writer of Pop Culture and Travel and also a published author of “The Roadhead Chronicles Book”

The Roadhead Chronicles Book

http://community.webtv.net/roadheadthree/book

Contact:
dharmabumroadie@yahoo.com