A Mini disappointment

When the new BMW Mini came out it was advertised as 'a Mini Adventure.' I've had the chance to drive one a few times recently, and I'm afraid it was more a Mini Disappointment.

There is nothing wrong with the car. In fact it's an excellent car - smooth, sophisticated and with a luxury car feel. To be accurate, there is one thing wrong with it, one ridiculous design fault. In a burst of nostalgic style over substance, the speedometer is plonked right in the middle of the dashboard, well out of the driver's line of sight. This is so bad that there is actually a second, digital speedo in the middle of the rev counter, which is situated where the speedometer should be. But that's a minor niggle.

Excellent though the Mini is, though, as a town car it isn't a patch on my usual Toyota Aygo. Over 45 miles per hour, the Aygo is pretty useless. At high speed it's sluggish and noisy. But for nipping around town it's wonderful. It's little engine is peppy and loves being pushed. The car is nippy, it's very lithe, and most of all it is great fun to drive. By comparison, the Mini feels big, fat and dull. Safe, absolutely. Luxurious, certainly. But it wouldn't recognize fun if it bit it on the bum.

Bearing in mind also that new the Mini costs twice as much as the Aygo to buy, it drinks half as much petrol again, and it's road fund licence costs over seven times as much, you can begin to see why I would say that, lovely though Minis are, I wouldn't consider swapping my Aygo for one.

Picture from Wikipedia

Comments

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's recent gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some ex

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Which idiot came up with percentage-based gradient signs

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps. Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think). That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope

Search This Blog