Feh. Just feh.

A couple weekends ago, I had the good fortune to go car shopping with a friend of mine. She’s looking for a small, cheap car. And I’m pleased to say that she found two excellent candidates: the Mazda3 and the Honda Fit.

At first, I was going to use this blog entry to sing the praises of these two vehicles. But I’m a Puritanical Yankee at heart, so offering praise would be emotionally draining. I’m much more comfortable unleashing fire and brimstone against sinners. Luckily, our series of test drives included one such sinner: the Mini Cooper.






I could rant about how obnoxious the ads are. I could spit venom at their self-satisfied anti-SUV slogans. I could lob grenades at the Mini culture which is so fake that you can smell the Axe bodywash of the advertising hack who invented it.

But none of those things bother me as much as the cars themselves: they are frauds. What kind of person spends $20,000 on a rattling, cramped, unreliable, tinny, creaky blob of pretension? The second-dumbest kind of person on earth, that’s what kind.

I bet you’re wondering what the absolute dumbest person on earth does. Fear not, I’ll enlighten you: the dumbest person on earth spends an extra $10,000 to buy a convertible Mini. The one we tested—brand new, mind you—had a leaky canvas roof that whistled even at 20 mph.

My friend expressed her doubts to the salesman. And can you believe his response....

“I don’t know what else to say to you, these cars usually sell themselves!”