We're Back. Here's What Happened While We Were Gone

If you are a dedicated reader of NorCalMINIs.com you may have noticed that we have not posted since Friday. Well, we just got back from Oregon where went went to pick up a five pound bag of Newport Bay Roastery's "Morning Defrogger" Coffee and large bottles of Rogue's "Double Dead Guy" Ale, the elixirs upon which we run this site. So here's a recap of the important MINI news that occurred while we were up north getting resupplied.

The biggest news - MINI introduced the MINI Countryman at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show. Jalopnik has video of all of the exhibitors, including MINI. You can read MINI's Ian Robertson's speech introducing the Countryman here at BMW Group PressClub USA.

According to BMW Blog, prior to the debut MINI staged a guerrilla promotional campaign throughout Geneva called "MINIWOOD" that culminated in a hyper-dimensional projection of “MINIWOOD” (twice as high as the Hollywood sign) onto the mountain cliff facing the city. As part of the campaign, MINI produced this mock “making-of” video:





MINI sales numbers for February were also revealed. In year over year sales, as reported by AutoSpies.com, MINI only experienced a 1.6% increase.

Finally, in an exclusive article MotoringFile revealed the future of the "MINI Connect" system. It fully integrates Apple's iPhone into the vehicle's computer system.  MINI is also working on making MINI Connect available for Blackberrys. MINI Connect will be available across the entire MINI model range. It can be had with or without Navigation but the large screen that comes with NAV makes this option come to life. The MINI Connect system is not just a web radio application but for many applications. MotoringFile expects email, the web, twitter, Google send to car and SMS to become available and MINI is expected to eventually debut its own app store.