[scooperman_uk]

nice one i certainly fell for it......

[jordan]

what a load of crap but it would be great if it was real New MINI Robot.

[elbee]

I just received my May 2004 issue of Motor Trend. Inside there is a small book that almost resembles an ad that is inserted for Mini's. It is 37 pages long with a few pictures and on the cover the title is 'Men of Metal -- Eyewitness accounts of humanoid robots'. I started reading it and it was about recent sightings of robots that saved people from single car accidents (i.e. falling asleep at the wheel, poor visability and driving off the road, swerving to avoid a rabbit and driving off the road, etc.) and returned them safely to the road with minor body damage to the car. Being a Mini owner I thought that since it closely resembled a Mini ad that eventually it would become apparent that it was. It never became apparent but there was some theory that the robots were constructed from Mini S's.

Was this story printed in the Euro-version of Motor Trend? Have any of you heard about this on the news or magazines?

Weird!

[EBMCS03]

O really... I just received that issue but havent read it yet... I did notice that tiny book tho.. I'll have to read it tomorrow...

[Juno]

Much more in Today's New York Times Business Section: -

Quote:

The truth about the campaign, which Mini USA and Crispin Porter call "interactive fiction," is to be finally revealed this month. Wall posters are to go up in big cities like Los Angeles and New York, featuring the Mini Cooper logo above images of the "motorbots." Those images will also turn up on the brand's official Web site (miniusa.com).

...

Mr. Spinella praised the robot campaign as an example of "targeted, viral marketing, spreading word-of-mouth among just the people you want to reach," which in this instance are primarily men ages 18 to 34.

...

The main Web site for the campaign (www.r50rd.co.uk) was produced by Crispin Porter and a company named Beam; the robot animation for the video clips on the site were produced by Zoic Studios. The site purports to be Colin Mayhew's online journal of his experiments, beginning, "I first had the vision to build a robot while working as an engineer on the old Mini Coopers in the 1960's."

The four other Web sites were produced by Crispin Porter. Two are faked personal sites for Mayhew (uk.geocities.com/colinmayhewphd/) and Samuel (members.lycos.co.uk/rowlandsamuel/). There is also a site for Casson (www.cassonpublishing.co.uk), complete with photographs on the home page of the covers of other mock books like "Contemporary Bigfoot Sightings in Northern Ohio" and "The Lincolnshire Crop Circles - Magic or Man?"

It's all here : http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/bu...partner=GOOGLE (two pages)



Juno

[lespurgeon]

What a great joke.

[BruceK]

I'll bet this advertising scheme stays underground for quite a while before all is generally well known.

[BruceK]

Probably has to do with this thread:

http://www.mini2.com/forum/showthrea...ighlight=robot




.

[Goldbug]

Hi guys,
Just signed up to let you know the news... it's now on Mini's homepage:
http://www.miniusa.com/

It's just becoming a huge deal in the Transformers fandom (again).

For those of you who didn't know yet, there's actually a Transformers toyline currently being released by Hasbro (in the USA) and Takara (in Japan) named "Alternators" (in the USA) or "Binaltech" (in Japan), respectively, which is based on real, fully licensed cars and targetted at both old school fans (as compared to the younger target audience of the main "Transformers: Energon" toyline) and collectors of model cars.
The companies that have signed up so far are Subaru (who licensesd their Impreza WRC and the WRX), Daimler-Chrysler (who licensed the Dodge Viper SRT-10, the Dodge Viper Competition and the Jeep Wrangler), General Motors (who licensed the Chevy Corvette Z06), Mazda (who licensed the RX-8) and Ford (who evidently licensed the Ford Mustang).

Mazda even did their own flash animation to promote the (yet unreleased) toy based on their car back in January:
http://www.mazdausa.com/MusaWeb/NA_Autoshow/main.html

And it pretty much appears the "biped Mini" is the direct response to this Mazda flash animation.

So this whole deal with Mini *might* mean they actually signed up and licensed the car to Hasbro for being used in the BT/Alt line. Which in turn means you *might* see a Mini on the shelves next year which is not only a 1/24 scaled car model with rubber tires, hinged doors and hood, detailed interior and working steering mechanism but which can on top of that be transformed into a fully articulated robot (unlike the lame Brickformers from your childhood).

I have put up my own small resource page on this topic, with more links than anyone could ever ask for.
http://tabman.bei.t-online.de/binaltech_english.html

Hope you like this news.

[paa100]

MINI MINI MINI MINI MINI!

i want a MINI one of those!