Overall I'm not very impressed with the new look for our MINI.
I don't mind the new doors, of all the changes, they look most like an evolution of our current models. Although they do seem to have lost even more storage space, & I hope they have some different colour options (the all black doesn't look finished at all).
I REALLY don't like the frypan speedo, it's way too large & bulbous, looks like this new design has 2 s.wheels. It is also much too busy with all the extra features incorporated into it, a centre speedo should be simple & easy to decipher, this is too confusing. And us Aussies have to swap the speedo and tacho because of Australian Design Rules regarding visibility issues, this is not helping. Looks more like a computer screen than a speedo!
The new 2 spoke s.wheel looks terrible, I much prefer my original 2 spoke.
The new air vents look very generic BMW now and lose their great MINI character. The side air vents are also disproportionately large & seem to squeeze the whole dash inwards.
The downtubes look terrible, our current ones give the car much more soul. These are much too angled, they look overly BMW designed & really clash with the curvy shapes everywhere else.
The new shift knob looks very plain & boring also compared to the current one, it screams replacement.
The centre stack looks like it's trying to be way too cool but instead, looks like one of those cheap, ultra tacky all-in-one spaceship stereos with
"turbo boost mega bass". All the silver pieces really cheapen the look. The MINI logo A/C looks a little contrived & doesn't fit in with the other pieces in the stack. They should also move the buttons behind the shifter back to toggle switches, the only people I ever remember whining about them being confusing were reporters. All that silver around the toggles is not required, it's too much & really detracts from the toggle switches themselves.
The more I look at the interior, the more it looks like a generic BMW design apart from the frypan speedo and star trek centre stack, which gives it the appearance of a badly thought out mish-mash of styles (IMO). I hope there is a lot of refinement still to be made, but in the end, higher quality materials can't convince me to upgrade to this new soul-less interior. My '04 MCS is looking even better now.
