You have to love it when 2 car companies like MINI and Porsche can get together for an ad campaign like this. Kudos to Porsche for having a good sense of humor!

Wow - been a while since something new got posted here! Ran across this and thought it was classic. Thanks to MotoringFile for posting it up!

Yikes! Check this video out of some horrific crashes involving our favorite little vehicle:

Thought this was pretty cool! Check it out:

You may have seen these floating around the interwebs lately. The new round of MINI ads featuring the new MINI Cabrio. Put together by the good folks at Plantage Berlin , these commercials are pretty amusing. What is shown below is the showroom reel that includes all of the latest ads that dealers will be playing in their showrooms. Enjoy!

AUSmotive posted up these videos (part 1 and 2) from the final round of the MINI Challenge Australia. Too bad we can’t get a real MINI Challenge series over here in the states…

I arrived home safe and sound from Daytona last night and boy are my arms tired! I am exhausted, but it was all worth it. Friday and Saturday were just great. Sunday was very wet and provided some scary moments as I got caught on the banking as a torrential monsoon hit the track, causing me to lose visability out of my windshield and fighting to keep the car from sliding off the banking trying to get back to pit road. In the end, I got soaked, but got back to the garages in one piece. The following video is from Saturday afternoon. Enjoy!

If you recall, last year I was able to make a dream come true by taking part in the first ever High Performance Drivers Experience at Daytona International Speedway. Well, this weekend, I will have the privilege to once again tackle the 30 degree banking @ 140mph at the Mecca of Motorsports with a few others of my track junkie brethren. I leave Thursday to get to the track for registration and get settled into my garage stall (yes we actually get assigned garage stalls this year in the NASCAR Sprint Cup garages). It should be an absolute blast. Until I get video up from this year’s event, here is my video from last year to check out:

One thing that can ruin a track weekend is a broken belt, resulting in your tensioner slamming down on your crank pulley, etc. For this very reason, I have been testing out various tensioner stops that will keep the tensioner from slamming down if the belt were to break. I am currently running the Detroit Tuned tensioner stop, but not sure how long it will stay on due to reports from the MINIs in the Grand Am series having the stop snap upon belt failure (not a good thing). ALTA’s latest tensioner stop looks to be a promising solution (see video below).

My concern with these devices is how bad they rattle or vibrate at wide open throttle. I have had a stop make so much noise in the past that I just had to take it off due to the harmonic resonance. I will see if we can get a unit from ALTA to test with and report back.

[ ALTA Tensioner Stop ]

I am slowly but surely catching up on all e-mails from the past few days (family emergencies have kept me away from the computer lately). This video was sent in a couple days ago from vlogbyMINI.de and it shows us the MINI Crossover Concept as it is introduced at the Paris Auto Show. Check it out!