Screw-in bonnet stops

[Chips]

Near each bonnet catch, there is an elongated hole that is shaped so that it appears to be designed for screw-in bonnet stops (similar to what's on the rear hatch). There's no actual stop screwed into these holes on my MCS for the bonnet and from what I can see, none appears in any photos I can find of engine bays in MINI2. Has anyone got anything in these holes? Picture below.

Chips

[IAN ELLIOTT]

Hi Chips, I don't have a MCS but a MO, had a look under bonnet, i notice from your pic that there is two holes one above each other, i only have the lower one with the hole in but don't have any bonnet stops anyway!!!!

-------Ian E----------

[MiNiGuY]

The holes in the area of the MFE (modular front end)as in the above picture and also the holes that can be found in other parts of the car are (depending on the hole in question) either part of the crumple design (to cause the car to crumple a certain way in an impact) or simply line up/access holes. These holes allow the robots to hold parts of the chassis accurately and also gain access through them when building up the chassis.
Other holes also merely allow access to bolts on the car in various areas.

[Chips]

Many thanks for the responses Ian and MiniGuy. It appears that the hole in question is only on MCS (at least early ones like mine Feb 02), and further, the hole appears to match with a round metal "pad" on the underside of the bonnet. At the moment, this pad rubs against the weatherstrip along the front of the engine compartment thus causing some paint to rub off the metal (on the bonnet) because it is not bearing on a rubber stop. It looks to me like the bonnet was supposed to come to rest on two stops but these have not been put in. The hole itself has a raised lip on one side and looks like a screw-in stop will thread into it easily. Not an important "fault", but interesting that the stops were apparently thought of but not implemented - or, as MiniGuy says, they could be designed for "crumple" but why then are there matching pads on the bonnet?

Chips

[MiNiGuY]

It's reasonable to speculate, I guess, that the holes in question could have originally been intended to hold bonnet stops.

If that were the case, they never made it to production, nor were they ever implemented.

The bonnet obviously doesn't seem to need them and assuming they were an original intention, it's obvious they would have been scrapped for cost saving reasons.

The car as a whole is constantly being pared down of bits and pieces that are not really absolutely essential, in order to save costs.