From Peter Ziedrich of Redwood Empire Mini Enthusiasts:
On Thursday, April 26, Norm and I, representing Redwood Empire Mini Enthusiasts, were invited to join representatives from the MINI US design team for an impromptu dinner in Crockett. The dinner party was made up of representatives from MINI USA, BMW (Germany), and Designworks/USA (an industrial design firm now a US subsidiary of BMW). We were joined by representatives from both MOASF and Norcal MINIs at the informal dinner.
To our surprise, we were the only US car clubs the design team was meeting with, and they were scheduled to return to Europe within the next couple of days. Prior to our dinner the team had much on it’s California agenda including meeting with the Sausalito based advertising company. The car designers were interested not only in our feelings regarding the 2007 model, but also in the Clubman (to be released internationally sometime in late 2007), possible variants of future models for MINI, our feelings of the local dealerships, and our ideas regarding current advertising. I must add that they were very careful not to disclose any information that was not already in the public domain.
