Talk:Mini

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	Mini is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do.
	This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on April 29, 2006.
Article Milestones Date Process Result March 1, 2006 Good article nominee Listed March 2, 2006 Peer review Reviewed March 19, 2006 Featured article candidate Promoted Current Status: Featured article

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Contents 1 MINI USA advertising campaign 2 Archive 3 Influence 4 Mr. Bean 5 Mini Magic section reversion 6 Names & Trade Marks

[edit] MINI USA advertising campaign

i would like to know if all the ads for mini owners have come out. i know the add using the decoder and the cut out has come out but what about the use of the glasses? i have not yet found that ad. 66.167.233.149 01:56, 11 October 2006 (UTC)mini owner and ad searcher66.167.233.149 01:56, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, for one thing, you are asking on the classic Mini page - and for another, Wikipedia isn't a service for answering user questions - but as it happens, I know the answer and I'm in a good mood!

MINI's advertising campaign entails three 'mystery decoders' - a finely gridded viewer (the 'decoder'), a mask that blocks out all but a few letters from a printed advert and a pair of glasses that block blue and green light. All three items were mailed to all existing MINI owners in a fake book. The campaign is announcing the use of these three things in magazine tie-ins. The first two have already been announced, the third has not. However, it's clear how this will work - the glasses block all but red light - so if you make up a picture where the actual interesting information is all in the red light - then cover it with all sorts of crazy designs in blue and green - then the result will be a mess until you look through the glasses.

We can only speculate that the third event will be tied into the 2007 model year announcements...at any rate, the only way to know when the third thing happens is to watch on the MINI 'Owner's Lounge' page to see if they listed the new event yet.

Meanwhile, try this out - I made it myself - it demonstrates the principle of how the glasses work:

[edit] Archive

We reached 50+ discussion topics - so I've archived them off to Talk:Mini/archive1 SteveBaker 14:21, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Influence

The article makes the bold statement "its space-saving front-wheel-drive layout influenced a generation of car-makers", but does not back it up with facts. That is was named second most influential car in a poll is not the same thing as, as far as I can tell, the poll did not specify what features made it influencial, nor measured it's influence on car-makers. And do we have a reference for this poll? // Liftarn

So now we need other references to back up the references? The article about the poll makes it very clear how the poll was taken - there were legions of car experts brought together in an unprecedented survey precisely to find out which car was "THE MOST INFLUENTIAL" - and then you dispute that this car was pretty goddam influential? Oh - please. This is taking fact checking to a stupid degree, Give it up. I'm reverting your annoying little tags AGAIN. SteveBaker 13:37, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

The article also says: "The ADO15 used a conventional BMC A-Series four-cylinder water-cooled engine,[6] but departed from tradition by having it mounted transversely, placing the engine oil lubricated, four-speed transmission in the sump, and by employing front-wheel drive. Almost all small front-wheel-drive cars developed since the 1970s have used a similar configuration.... All of these novel and elegant technical innovations resulted in a car with minimum overall dimensions yet maximised space for passengers and luggage."

Some who are familiar with the history of the development of car design might say that these details are self-evident. But it may be that you disagree. Do you feel that citations are needed to confirm that most (if not all) small cars used to be rear-wheel drive before the Mini and most are now front-wheel drive, and that this design was introduced to save space? Adrian Robson 11:32, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

These features most certainly are self evident. You'll probably say that lifting the hood of my 1963 classic Mini (which, incidentally I've been restoring bolt by bolt for the past year) and observing that the engine is indeed mounted transversely and that it does in fact drive the front wheels is 'original research'. Geez.

This article made it all the way to the front page featured article of the day. It has more references than 99.9% of other Wikipedia articles and every single fact within the article can be found in one of the dozen books and technical sources we quote or in other Wikipedia articles we link to. To continually litter the article with silly little numbers and tags that throw doubt into the readers minds about the accuracy of the article is wasting your time, my time and making the encyclopedia worse - not better. Please find an underresearched article and go research the thing instead of annoying the heck out of authors who are taking the time to do things right - THAT would be a productive use of your time. SteveBaker 13:37, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mr. Bean

I've noticed that there is no mention of Mr. Bean and his adventures with the Mini anywhere in this article. Looking at the historical discussion, I see somebody added it at one point whilst it was a featured page, but it was then removed and nothing has been said since. Because of the central role the car plays in many the television episodes, I think it is at least worth mentioning in this article, even if just a trivia bullet. Could the kind people of wikipedia give a reason as to why this is absent? Bcirker 00:03, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure why that reference disappeared - my guess is that we didn't want to upset anyone between the article being FA's and getting onto the front page. But I don't think it's all that important. Mini's have appeared and starred in dozens of movies and TV shows (there are at least 40 of them listed here alone) - Mr Bean is just one of the more recent ones. Which are the most notable? Is this information more important than that the Beatles owned them - or Peter Sellers? Those were the people who put the Mini on the map - who made it cool to own one - who made it the 'cult' car it always was. Mr Bean came along just as the Mini was ending production and only (IIRC) about 4 of 5 of the sketches actually used the car. Who out there is crying out for information about 'Butterflies' which undoubtedly started the craze for painting flags on the roofs of Mini's? Should we place List of films featuring Mini cars content into this article too? 'Trivia' sections are not good for encyclopedia content (see WP:TRIVIA for some guidelines) - and I don't think FA's on serious subjects should strive to have them. I don't think talking about Mr Bean adds much to the article - and I certainly don't want to open the floodgates to dozens and dozens of TV show and movie references cluttering up the article. SteveBaker 00:56, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough, perhaps someone can make a seperate page of pop culture references to the Mini or some such thing. I totally understand the bad precident it could set. The wikipedia trivia guidelines have not yet been formally adopted, but I see wikipedia moving away from containing random collections of facts anyway. Bcirker 00:57, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I already took some of that initiative - the List of films featuring Mini cars was my way to remove long lists of movies from the article. It could perhaps be extended and renamed to be a list of Mini pop culture references - or perhaps just changed from 'films' to 'films and TV shows'. The 'list' style is well suited to this kind of thing. SteveBaker 13:25, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mini Magic section reversion

I wanted to explain why I reverted this section:

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Mini Magic

The mini competed just as well on a circuit as it did on a rally stage. Winning no less than 5 British Touring Car Championships between 1961 and 1979. The giant killing mini's provided epic entertainment as they tackled much larger and more powerful machinery in a true david and goliath scenario. In a mini it seemed anything was possible with drivers such as John Rhodes, John Love and Warwick banks, to name only a few, who could do the impossible around corners. In 1961 John Whitmore won the BTCC in his Morris Mini minor beating a 3.8l MK 2 Jaguar in the process. The minis success continued right into the late seventies where Richard Longman won both the 1978 and 1979 in a Mini Clubman 1275GT, beating a Mazda RX-7, a Volkswagen Golf GTi and Ford Capri 3000GT.

---

• Firstly it's very non-Wiki, capitalisation and punctuation is a mess, there are no links, no references (and a LOT of information here that needs references). This is a 'Featured Article' and it's on it's way to the Wiki-on-CDROM and we don't want to lose that status by diluting content that's already 'good enough'.
• Secondly, there a lot of biassed and incorrect statements (remember - this is an encyclopdia - not a club newsletter!) - you can't say things like "who could do the impossible around corners" - No - they couldn't do the impossible. What they did was entirely possible - we know because they actually did it! This is OK language for informal writing - but no good at all for Wikipedia.
• Unnecessarily flowery English: "no less than 5"...what's wrong with just "five" ?
• "it seemed like anything was possible"...no it didn't!
• Way, over-the-top: The giant killing mini's provided epic entertainment as they tackled much larger and more powerful machinery in a true david and goliath scenario....oh - please.

I'm all in favor of adding some stuff about Mini's illustrious racing history - but let's make sure we have NPOV - complete references - just the facts - good English and an encyclopeadic style. SteveBaker 00:50, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Names & Trade Marks

Two points please, based on being Head of Trade Marks in Rover Group's Legal Dept from 1992-99 and a trade mark attorney with 30 year's experience:

1. My statement "Despite its utilitarian origins, the classic Mini shape had become so iconic that by the 1990s Rover Group, the heirs to BMC, were able to register its design as a trade mark in its own right" has lost the footnote it had cross-referencing it to source (see http://www.crossguard.info/about-us.html); and

2. The statement that "Somehow legal action was averted" in respect of Bond's earlier use of the name "Minicar" is unlikely speculation - if Bond had used "Minicar" rather as a generic description, could not show confusion and had no trade mark registration, then any legal action (for passing off) would have been most unlikely to succeed.

Logomage 13:18, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

1. ...fixed. Thanks!
2. Well, all I can say is: Check out Bond Cars Ltd - they had cars called "Minicar Mark A" (1949) through to the "Minicar Mark G" in 1964. These were not generic terms - they were very specific model name. So it wasn't a generic description and it overlaps the use of "Mini" by several years. SteveBaker 00:37, 1 January 2007 (UTC)