This past Sunday night, I wandered over to my local movie theater to catch Black Mass. Although I'm suffering from a bit of Joel-Edgerton-related-ennui lately and I never really got over the idea of Hey, that's Johnny Depp in makeup, I had to admit that overall, it was a tightly plotted and thoroughly entertaining film. More importantly, it had an absolutely killer lineup of Malaise-era automobiles, including an utterly stunning '78 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight with a white leather interior. In fact, until the moment that a 1980 Citation makes an unexpected and rather violent appearance on the scene, it's nothing but wall-to-wall Seventies sedans. Just the way I like it.
I remember that as a child my grandparents complained about the squared-off, generic appearance of pretty much everything for sale in the post-Nixon era. I can sympathize a bit because although every car sold in the Fifties also looked just like every other car for sale, the general template of the Bel Air/Fairlane/et al was appealing and colorful and optimistic. But even if you don't care for the '74 Malibu Classic or the '79 Granada, at least they had proportions that emphasized width over height. The worst of them had a certain dignity.
Not so with today's rolling toaster ovens. We're rapidly approaching the era where every single car for sale will be some variant on the almighty CR-V. The latest sales data from Porsche and MINI simply hammer that home, with a uniquely depressing twist.
Let's face it: the "New MINI" was never really that miniature. The Alec Issigonis original was a masterpiece of space and materials efficiency right down to its ten-inch wheels, but the BMW zombie-MINI was always more about the idea of being small. The actual car was merely a shortened version of the same not-so-compact cars that Europe has been buying in droves since forever; it was about the same length as an '82 Civic but you could have fit an '82 Civic inside a first-gen New MINI with enough room around it for a few inches of bubble wrap.
The two generations of the "Cooper" that followed simply expanded the box a bit, but the central conceit of the MINI brand — that people would buy a small car as long as it wasn't really that small — didn't reach its logical conclusion until the arrival of the simply monstrous Countryman and Paceman. The first time I saw a Countryman on the road, it was next to a damn-near-full-sized modern Camry and I thought I was suffering from some sort of THC flashback. In truth, the Countryman slightly exceeds a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow in height and matches it in width. If you owned a Camargue, that fearsomely crass Pininfarina Saudi-market boat of the Black Mass era, you could drive behind a Countryman utterly unseen.
In a perfect world, the MINI Countryman wouldn't rate any interest from anyone besides my old friend Michael Banovsky, who could perhaps feature it in his next Weird Cars book. In this world, the Countryman is a hit. In fact, together with the four-door stretched version of the MINI, it's accounting for more than half of the brand's sales. So it turns out that what people really want from MINI is a Honda CR-V, only with MINI badges. Shame that Rover and Honda aren't tied-up the way they were in the Sterling 825/Acura Legend days, because then the MINI could actually be a Honda CR-V, which would satisfy everyone.
I read this news about MINI sales shortly after cracking open an issue of Panorama and seeing that sales of the new Porsche Macan CUV are somewhat larger than the sales of all Porsche sports cars combined. So it turns out that what people really want from Porsche is, also, a Honda CR-V, only with Porsche badges and some rather irresponsible levels of forward thrust.
You can make the argument that the CR-V is actually a very nice package for families and that it represents a very sensible compromise for parents who want a vehicle that fits into both a small garage and a vacation with the kids. But since the only people who can afford new cars nowadays are DINKs and old people, why are they all buying lowered-expectations family-wagons? It would be like if everybody started wearing mom jeans all at once, even if they were smoking-hot 24-year-olds, because that's the only sensible choice.
We're heading towards the Shoe Event Horizon, you know. It's the same thing that led to the infamous Chicken Corner Of Columbus. When everybody else in the neighborhood is selling chicken, it takes a truly iconoclastic individual or enterprise to resist the siren song of fried bird, to steer between the Scylla of the breast and the Charybdis of the thigh, to choose something else on which to build one's culinary destiny.
Well the danger on the rocks is surely past
Still I remain tied to the mast
Who will be the first manufacturer to cry Hold! and stop this slouching towards compact utility? Who will have the courage to introduce a vehicle that repudiates the indifferent transportation capsule? Who will bet their company on styling or speed or excitement that reaches beneath superficial flourishes on a five-door box? There's fame and fortune to be had for the visionary who succeeds. For everybody else, there's security, and sameness, as long as one is willing to dream in miniature.
The post What Were Once Minis Have Become Habitual appeared first on The Truth About Cars.
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