Do MINI drivers have more fun? After participating in a dealer’s road rally in May, I’d say so. Prestige MINI of Mahwah, N.J. marked its sixth anniversary by hosting a road rally along scenic roads of New York’s Orange and Rockland Counties. Prestige hosts 4-to-6 such events a year rather than using conventional advertising. I drove a MINI Cooper S Clubman, borrowed from MINI USA.
I had interviewed the vice president, as well as sales and service managers, of Prestige MINI in March for a story I wrote for AIADA’s Auto Dealer magazine. The story, which publishes in June, highlights the brand’s remarkable success in a market that had traditionally relegated small hatchback cars to the economy-class only category.
My experience in the road rally confirmed what MINI executives and dealers had told me: that customer excitement and zeal for the product and brand outshines anything they have ever seen before. Anything? One of the dealers I interviewed, Tim Markel (MINI of Omaha), worked in his father’s Ford dealer when the first Mustang arrived, so he knows customer excitement when he sees it.
Bear in mind, customer excitement for the MINI is still growing, six years after the brand launched in the States. The first wave of excitement for the Mustang (there have been several), at least at the retail level, had cooled considerably by the time the 1971 models had arrived.
My magazine writing has put me in contact with zealots in the Corvette, Mustang and Mopar crowds over the past 22 years. I can easily say that the MINI crowd is having at least as much if not more fun. Yes, you’ll find strong owner devotion among many other brands and models (Evo vs. STI, anyone?). Usually, though, the excitement for such cars is confined to that group, and the general public does not care or notice. And, such groups are often quite narrow, demographically speaking.
The crowd for the Prestige MINI rally resembled the ones I had seen at recent John Fogerty concerts: late 30’s to late 40’s in the core, followed by 50’s, a sprinkling of 20-somethings and a few 60+. I wouldn’t doubt that some had been to the original Woodstock. And like a Fogerty concert, there were several children under 12 – about the only ages that will fit in the back seats of these diminutive cars.
Judging by the tire screeching away from stop signs, this was not just a “show ’n shine” crowd hopped up on caffeine from the pancake breakfast that kicked off the event. These folks were out to enjoy their cars.
The event launched at the Fearless Hook and Ladder Company #1 in Walden, N.Y. Prestige MINI’s general sales manager is a member of the department, and the dealership made a donation for everyone who registered. There were 56 cars in all, a bit light compared to the 75-80 the dealer’s events normally draw.
Onlookers seemed to be enjoying the procession of MINI’s, too. In any residential section we passed through, I saw people on their lawns waving, giving thumbs up, other cars honking horns and other cars letting the parade of MINI’s go at intersections. Many oncoming drivers honked or flashed headlights, too – and they weren’t even driving MINI’s. Imagine a procession of Porsche 911’s or BMW M3’s doing the same thing – think they’d get the same reception?
