Was it ever a brand though? It used to be just the one car, and was only briefly sold under the Mini brand before BMW took over. Before that it was sold under Morris, Austin, Rover...

They have relatively large grilles with a chrome surround and diamond-shaped plastic mesh, and the headlights are sort of round. I’m not saying it’s actually stately in the way a Bentley or RR is, but it’s stately-ish enough and generic-British-car-looking enough to do the job in that market segment. And that’s all it…

Body is spec because since it’s only low-speed street circuits aero is not that important, and they don’t want teams to spend millions in chassis development because that’s not what the series is for.

DPi is Daytona prototypes? I don’t know what the WRX budget is but it can’t be that expensive compared to WEC, and it’s not a factory team. Even Formula E + WRX must be much cheaper than WEC.

Eventually, yes. The next big change is season 5 when they will move to a new body and a new battery, but both of those will still be spec. McLaren has won the battery tender and the body is still undecided. Still, at least that new battery will ensure the cars can last the full race.

It started spec but every season more things are opened to development, the manufacturers involved are definitely not merely sponsors. Currently the electric motor, inverter, gearbox, rear suspension, wheels and the accompanying software are open to development. All teams save for Techeetah (which is a Renault…

The end of the current era at least, that’s for sure. They will need to change things dramatically if they want to attract other manufacturers. Companies don’t want to go to F1 because it’s a bottomless pit of development costs, WEC cannot simply be F1 with enclosed wheels and longer races. Peugeot have basically said…

Interesting how much this interior differs from the Nissan when the Renault Alaskan has the exact same as its Japanese cousin save for the logo.

It’s because Daimler has a pretty big partnership with Renault-Nissan, this is only the latest result of that. The diesel engines in the A, GLA and CLA-Class are Renault engines. Daimler helped Renault with interior quality on the Espace. The Renault Kangoo van is sold by Mercedes as the Citan. The Infiniti Q30 and…

BMW have decided that MINI doesn’t mean “small” anymore, it means “colorful, British and fun to drive”, and that can be applied to any kind of car of any size. I understand that this flies in the face of everything Sir Issigonis intended with the Mini, but it makes sound business sense.

When I saw the pictures last night I nearly recoiled in shock. But actually, looking at them this morning I quite like it. It’s like a mini Grand Wagoneer, it’s barely an SUV really. And it’s not like the previous one won any beauty contests. I love the horizontal rectangular headlights. I think the interior will look…

Who said it’ll be a luxury pickup? Mercedes is a luxury brand in the US but in other parts of the world a very significant part of vehicles you see on the road with three-pronged stars look like this:

I must say I prefer Renault’s version.

I don’t know if they were sold in the States but in France there’s always the option of buying an ID. It was the budget DS with an unpainted fibreglass roof (at first), manual gearbox, no hydraulic brakes or steering, less powerful engine and overall less luxurious spec. But it has the exact same good looks and the…

Is this cheating?

Me too, and now I love it.

Clio III or IV? And yeah, French people not being fans of autos generally speaking, and being somewhat stingy when it comes to actually buying a car, French carmakers never really felt compelled to work very hard at their automatics. You can get very good ones in the bigger models now (PSA EAT6, Renault EDC…

That was such an awful era of Renault design. When Patrick Le Quément was their head of design they turned out production cars even more amazing than the concepts (Mégane II, Avantime, Vel Satis) but by the mid-2000's had apparently decided that boring and soulless was the way to go, and the concepts became…

B... but why?

Not to mention that it’s safer to drive barefoot than in flip flops.