Trip Report: MINI Takes the States, Part 5

[Tick-Tock]

Conveniently, the stop for July 11 was in Boulder, CO, so DH was able to spend the night at home. Our two Colorado MINI dealers put on a great party at the 29th Street Mall in Boulder. I took the family up to admire all the MINIs, which they dutifully did.

DH was off again on July 12, Boulder to Albuquerque. Then Albuquerque to Phoenix (actually Scottsdale) on July 13. I flew from Denver to Phoenix that evening to catch the last leg. The staff of the Scottsdale hotel, the Saguaro, went all out to accommodate MTTS; they even drew little welcoming signs for each check-in station! I liked the hotel's offbeat decorating style. And it had music piped into the pool, which you could only hear when you were underwater!

July 14 was the last leg, Phoenix to LA. In Indio, CA, the MINIs practically took over an In-N-Out. A lot of us are from locations that don't have In-N-Out and had to get a fix! The evening party was at the House of Blues. It was a gorgeous drive down Sunset from the hotel to the club.

Finally, July 15 saw the MINIs at the beach for a wrap party. They arranged the cars in the shape of a MINI logo for a group photo taken from up in the hills. Then final goodbyes, and DH and I were off to Disneyland!

By the way, MINI is a sponsor of U.S. Paralympics. They provided a car to Michael Johnston, a triathlete who is hoping to represent the U.S. in the 2016 Rio games. Michael drove the whole route and trained along the way, as well as graciously speaking to numerous people at every event. And at the autocross events, space was provided for other Paralympic athletes to meet and greet. We met a wheelchair rugby athlete who had gold medals from Atlanta and Sydney.

At every stop, it seemed that there were a few hundred MINIs. But no two were alike--with the number of choices to customize your MINI, plus the addition of graphics, etc., it's easy to be unique!

Conclusion: MINI USA, the regional divisions of MINI, and the MINI dealers put on a great event! One of the nice things is that the "Chief Motorer," Jim McDowell (Vice President of MINI USA), drove the whole route and addressed the participants at every stop. The organizers were very receptive to feedback and wanted to make sure we were all having a great time.

They said that more than 6,000 people participated in MTTS 2012, whether it was driving a leg or two, attending an autocross, or driving the whole way. About 100 people were those slightly crazy ones like DH who ended up going the whole way (and most of them drove back to their homes, meaning that they crossed the country twice in the space of a few weeks!).

Can't wait to see what MINI comes up with for 2014!

[Tink#64]

Great report, very interesting journey! Sounds like a really cool trip! Thanks for sharing!

[DisneyLandMomma]

Thanks for sharing!! How fun! Sounds like such an awesome experience!

[disney obsessed]

Loved reading your report! I have had a mini since 06 and the culture of mini ownership is so cool. Do you remember getting the little black boxes in the mail? I guess they don't do that any more. Also, when we first bought they car there were very few around and the owners would always wave. Not many do these days around here. Do they still do it were you live?

[Tick-Tock]

We generally wave if we see a MINI in time. We get waves about half the time.

It's our theory that there are basically two camps of MINI owners: those that have them because they are MINIs (they wave) and those that have them because they want a small fuel-efficient car (they don't). As MINI has sold more and more cars here in the U.S., more of the latter group are around.

We see a lot of MINIs around Boulder and Denver, way more than we used to. We got our first MINI in 2002 (in New York because of the Colorado waiting list) and we saw exactly one other between New York and Colorado. People were always asking us, "what kind of car is that?" That hasn't happened for quite a few years now, though.