Motor Industry News
Geneva Motor Show - Mini
Created Date: 31/03/2011
Mini heralded their amazing number of sales in the Geneva press conference, with a record 234000 cars sold in 2010 and 30000 sold this year to date. Not short of forthcomings Mini came to show with two solid unveilings, the Mini Cooper SD and the pint sized Rocketman. The Cooper SD is Mini’s answer to solid performance without the footprint, hence its diesel engine. It certainly has the eco friendly footprint figures - running at 65.7mpg and emitting only 114g/km CO2, but it also has a pretty powerful engine to boot. Its 2.0 litre engine produces a very respectable 141bhp which will see it go from 0-60 in roughly 8 seconds and onto a top speed of 134mph, all while happily falling into the £30 a year road tax bracket.
The Rocketman was Mini’s super hatchback/micro concept car. Call it what you will, it managed to captivate many people’s hearts as it made us all reminisce back to the Mini’s of old. With an aim of capturing what made the original Mini so good, the Rocketman is only 3419mm long, trimming a good 304mm from today’s Mini hatch. It also carries some clever concepts that try to fix the everyday problems of a car this small. The doors are double hinged for example and split in half at the middle, so that people can get more easily in and out of the front and back seats. Yes I did say that right – back seats. Thankfully they’ve kept the rear seats in the Rocketman, meaning one extra modestly sized person will be able to squeeze in. Amazingly it even carries a storage boot at the rear, though it is admittedly so small that it’s practically useless. Aesthetically it’s all a blend of high tech materials such as space frame aluminium and carbon fibre – I doubt they’ll get through the concept phase of its design. Inside it’s even more suitably space age, with glowing red lights everywhere and plenty of brushed metal finishes. A cool touch is the glass Union Jack roof which covers the entire top of the car, giving full view of the world above. This is set to be a great little performer when it goes into production, but just how much of it gets through the concept stage will remain to be seen.
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Article written by Thomas Wellburn...
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