2009 Mini Cooper E: Giant Speedo Wash-Out

"A Mini with normal gauges would be like Angelina Jolie with normal lips."

Probably true. Personally, I'd prefer normal gauges on a Mini and normal lips on Angelina.

lenscrafters is working on non-reflective lenses, perhaps they can give Mini a hand. Or …

Mini's Design Director Gert Hildebrand when asked about the roof of the Mini coupe concept said, “My teenage son provided an unexpected inspiration. The car has a baseball cap on its head, with the front backward, just like my son," "It is simple logical." Why not apply that “simple logic” to the interior and give the gage a baseball cap?

I don't mind the speedo, but the toggle window switches mounted low on the center stack bugs the crap out of me. It's a 'feature' that could actually keep me from buying a Mini.

As far as Jolie's lips go. What's abnormal about them? She's not Melanie Griffith or Donatella Versace (who I personally think is really a man). Find some pictures of her as a kid, she had the same full lips, so for her, they are normal.

I think it must be sunnier when you drive a Mini Cooper E, what with helping the environment and all. But, the dinner-plate-speedo is dumb and a poor homage to the old Mini, which had a much smaller and practical version.

firstclass, 3M already has a product. All they'd need to do is cut it to size and plunk it in there. It's a little pricey, but Mini could just triple the cost and call it an option.

nonsense. I had a Cooper S for 2 years and the first fallacy of the post... that any driver ever looks at the pizza pan speed. The center speedo is like nipples on a male...

LOL Blue

I agree with blueguy...I never use the center speedo.

Perhaps the white face gauge in the regular MINI instead of the black background here would reflect more light, mitigating some of the problem. I wonder why BMW switched from white to black in the 1st place.

The center-mount speedo was a saucer sized dumb idea fifty years ago, and it's a dinner plate sized dumb idea today.

^Illustrating that retro for the sake of retro is also dumb if it forces more compromises with no benefit.

Yes cwc1 you couldn't be more correct. Just look at the new Camaro, perfect example of this.

All of you. The center mounted speedo isn't a "Retro for the sake of being retro" feature. It makes perfect sense when you think about it. If you were making a car sold in eighty countries around the world and some of those markets were right hand drive wouldn't you want it to be easy to swap the steering wheel without too much major re engineering? Also this "Pie Plate" you refer to is only this large because it houses the radio display as well. This allows MINI to reduce the width of the center stack to make the car even more friendly for people of a taller stature.

^But that makes it a vestigial feature with no real function, as its location is inconvenient for drivers of either side of the car. I know Toyota/Scion also has center mounted instruments on some of its cars, as did Saturn's Ion, and it just screams cheapo to me.