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The
MINI Is Fun
How
Laurie Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the MINI
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ABOVE:
Laurie commandeers the MINI (again). Note the sly, ironic
(and, some might say, heartless) smile. |
My
wife Laurie just told me that she has never really had fun driving
a car until the MINI.
“But the MINI is fun.”
I
am happy to hear this, since Laurie does the finances and the fact
that she enjoys the car may result in my getting less grief when
it comes time to make the payments. But it is slightly troubling,
too. Since I traded her Jeep for a Saab convertible with which she
promptly failed to bond, Laurie has been driving the BMW 528i that
I bought with my first wave of book royalties back in 1999. I paid
cash for that car (something I wouldn’t dream of doing today),
and its tight suspension and sports car handling have spoiled me.
I was high on the Bimmer’s performance when I banished the
Jeep from the fold; I preached against its lumbering, swaying ride
as if it were a deep moral fault. The Saab convertible suffered
a similar condemnation after two years. It handled with uncertainty
and leaned precariously through the corners. I used to love Saabs.
Since college I have owned at least five of them. They used to be
quirky, but now they seem downright sensible, having surrendered
every lick of personality except the ignition between the seats.
I spent a weekend with the new 9-3 Sport Sedan and found that the
more time I put in behind the wheel, the less I wanted to pay Saab’s
exorbitant price. About the same time, I drove the MINI Cooper S
and fell in love.
But
until now, Laurie has not really shared that love. I suppose you
could describe her attitude as indulgence. She looked on benignly
as I raced MINIs on the Xbox and gave me a tolerant smile as I imported
back-issues of GoMini magazine from England. She tuned out my rambling
monologues about chrome interior bits, driving shoes and Euro parcel
shelves. She even went along for a test drive and gave the MINI
her blessing. She has behaved exactly the way a wife does when she
has decided not to stand in the way of her husband’s latest
obsession.
Recently,
though, something has changed. We picked up the MINI on a Thursday
evening and drove it to Louisiana and back the next day. Outside
of Lake Charles, we were stranded for half an hour on the massive
210 bridge while a five-car pile up cleared. Laurie leaned out of
the MINI’s passenger window with her compact to try and see
what was going on up ahead. While she was out there, an old guy
in a dusty extended cab truck rolled his window down and asked her,
“What kind of car is that?”
“A
MINI Cooper,” she said.
“A
what?”
“A
MINI Cooper.”
All
the while, it is raining, the wind is blowing and we are suspended
on the bridge that used to freak me out as a child.
“Who
makes that?” the guy wants to know.
“MINI,”
Laurie tells him.
“Who?”
I
tell her, “Say BMW. He’ll know what that is.”
“BMW,”
she says.
The
truck driver nods appreciatively. “I like it.” He draws
the word like out like a fiddle player drawing a bow across strings.
He really digs the MINI.
And
he’s not the only one. In Lake Charles, people approach it
in the parking lot of Ruby Tuesday's as if it might be an alien
craft. One couple creeps forward, walks away, then turns back to
look at the badge on the boot (MINI owners make a point of referring
to the trunk as the boot). I couldn't help imagining how disappointed
they would be if I appeared on the scene and announced myself as
driver. They were expecting someone green, or at the very least
someone in a shiny pressurized suit.
One
thing that startles me is the way people react to the MINI. Before
taking delivery, I had spent hours and hours online at MINI2.com
and North American Motoring.com, and frankly I was expecting some
hostility on the road. From what I had read about anti-yuppie resentment
focused on the little beast, I was expecting to get the finger from
haughty muscle cars and have resentful PT Cruisers cross eight lanes
of traffic to cut me off. Instead, people have been incredibly pleasant.
And the ones who talk to me are not the people you would expect.
Our first Sunday afternoon with the MINI, Laurie and I put the windows
down and went for a drive around the area. We spotted another Pure
Silver Cooper S airing his tires at a gas station, so we pulled
in to buy soft drinks. I waved at the MINI driver and he seemed
so stunned (and frankly, disappointed) to see another MINI in our
part of town that he couldn’t collect himself in time to wave
back. In the parking lot, though, the driver of a purple Mustang
rumbled up alongside to tell me what a cool car I was driving. He
had noticed the interior when Laurie got out to grab the drinks,
and he was impressed. This guy was not a yuppie. He did not appear
to be the sort to put a Vulcan range in his kitchen or to fret over
the absence of granite countertops. He was sunburned and wearing
a wife-beater t-shirt. But he thought the MINI was class personified.
The
first time I refueled the MINI (for an iniquitous $2.12 per gallon),
a middle-aged black man walked over to interrogate me. His friend
was fueling up a van packed with tools and what might have been
musical equipment.
“Is
that the MINI, or the Cooper?”
“It’s
a Cooper S,” I tell him.
“So
that’s the normal one?”
I’m
not sure how to answer this, so I just nod.
It
was not until the next morning that Laurie first drove the new car.
I made the suggestion on the spur of the moment. I had just fitted
the Euro parcel shelf and the glove box organizer (and just given
up on the poorly constructed center console organizer, though I
later managed to fit it in), so I was looking for praise. While
she inspected the job, I asked if she’d like to drive it.
Perhaps
that was a mistake. She looked like she was having a lot of fun.
I did my best impression of a driving instructor, pointing out inefficiencies
I observed in her technique, and even this did nothing to dampen
her spirits. I had anticipated a simple spin around the block, but
instead we ended up racing through FM 1960 traffic, then doubling
back to our neighborhood (the long way), where Laurie started throwing
the car through the corners with surprising enthusiasm.
Now,
when Laurie has to run an errand, she doesn’t take the BMW
or the Saab. She cheerily announces that she’s going in the
MINI. When girlfriends arrived for dinner Saturday evening, she
took them for a drive and then returned with plans to take both
friends and MINI on a shopping excursion in the near future.
“Are
you getting a MINI?” I asked, pretending to be surprised.
The implication was that my MINI wasn’t going shopping with
the girls, so she must be talking about some other MINI.
“This
is our MINI,” Laurie replied.
Now
there is a lot of history behind that little comment. Back in 2002,
when I convinced her to part with the Jeep so that the Saab could
enter the fold, I made a big point about both the BMW and the Saab
being our cars, not mine and hers. The point, of course, was to
establish my right to drive either one, depending on my mood, with
Laurie taking the other one. This collective ownership did not sit
well with her. Laurie likes to personalize her vehicle with little
collections of Kleenex and CDs. She likes to leave ankle weights
and umbrellas and miscellaneous papers in the back seat of her ride.
If both cars were “ours,” then which one was she supposed
to nest in? Neither, I explained. Both cars must be maintained along
the Spartan minimalist lines I prefer. When you exit the vehicle,
leave nothing behind.
Laurie
decided to abandon that path early on. Since the Saab was a stick
and I had forced her out of the comfy Jeep to obtain it, she determined
that it was my car, and that the BMW was hers. By this time I was
feeling guilty about my little subterfuge, so I went along with
the division of spoils, knowing that I would still get to clock
plenty of time in the Bimmer, since I always drive when we go somewhere
together. The BMW is full of junk now, and the Saab looks like it
was driven off the factory lot this morning. There is no question
about which one belongs to husband, which to wife.
But
when Laurie said, “This is our MINI,” it implied that
that era of separation might be coming to an end. Today, I drove
it into town for a meeting, and then she took it to her exercise
class. Ever since she returned, I have been itching to go drive
it again, just to re-establish my dominion.
My
one hope is that Laurie might follow through on the MINI she configured
online: a pepper white S with black stripes and Cordoba leather
interior. After her original test drive, she joked about selling
the BMW to pay for it. I would hate to do that, but I would hate
to see a box of Kleenex and a set of ankle weights in the back seat
of the MINI even more. At one of the online theology forums I sometimes
frequent, someone started a thread about the MINI, naming it as
an icon of cultural rot. Especially worthy of condemnation were
the cute couples who acquired His and Hers MINIs. The author assumed
that these must be the sickeningly sweet people we all love to hate.
At the time, I thought it was a pretty tacky gesture, too. But now
I see that having two MINIs in the garage might serve a useful and
necessary purpose. It might keep my MINI from spending Saturday
afternoons in the parking lots of Old Navy, Pottery Barn, or Crate
& Barrel. It might keep both of us happy behind the wheel of
a car that, finally, both of us think is “fun to drive.”
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