Those materials form the roof, floor, door trim, and seat backs, which also are knitted like a cardigan sweater with black microsuede. Inside, aluminum, plastic, and paper predominate. Just like an automated tram, the opposing rear doors slide open on rails, taking much of the fenders with them. This Mini’s roof and doors can display custom colors and images-no vinyl wrap or dealer accessory catalog required-plus, projectors within the sills and front bumper can send text messages and other graphics onto the street surface. That’s what we were told in the 1950s when dream cars lacked safety measures like seat belts, so everything old is indeed new again.
There’s no crash structure up front because future cars won’t crash.
A translucent grille allows views of the occupants’ legs and feet behind a pair of outlined rally lights, while the adjoining windshield canopy sweeps low and wide like that on an airport terminal tram. Stored personal preferences will let car-sharers configure each borrowed Mini to their own tastes-it will make every Mini “my Mini,” the company says.Īt the rear, convention reigns with nothing more than a thin band of LED lights connecting the width of the glass liftgate to suggest tomorrow-ness. (A fourth concept, from BMW’s Motorrad motorcycle division, is forthcoming.) If this concept is any indicator, future Mini models will be part of a fully automated electric car-sharing service that will preemptively study its customers’ preferences so it can bathe them in multicolor mood lighting at critical moments. Now that BMW is a century old, the design studio has cranked out a trio of celebratory concepts meant to show what BMW, Rolls-Royce, and Mini will stand for in the century to come. Its cutesy quirks and retro cues survive under modernized German manufacturing processes (today’s car shares a new front-wheel-drive chassis with the BMW X1). Mini has been under BMW control since 1994, when Munich bought the British brand. Without so much as a tailfin, Mini’s concept calls back to the postwar allure of adventuring on wheels. This Mini Cooper of the future would be rented for as long as needed under car-sharing schemes, and autonomously guide itself to the perfect make-out spot.
So, when their kids grow up and get into a car, Mini envisions that they may slide into the front bench seats of something like its Vision Next 100 concept and cuddle their dates in the parking lot like it was Happy Days all over again. Young men grow bushier mustaches than their dads did in the 1970s. Girls today wear cutoff mom-jean shorts plucked from the Saved by the Bell era.
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