2004 Mini Cooper S Only 25k Mile*manual Trans*heated Seats*moonroof*clean Carfax on 2040-cars

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Get lost in Evo's sublime 2013 Car of the Year testing

Every year Evo stages its Car of the Year test, bringing the best performance cars in the world to one location for an epic shootout. This year the magazine pitted eight CotY finalists against each other on Route Napoleon in Southern France - Evo claims it's the "best road in the world" - and then proceeded to nitpick the smallest of faults on each car until the winner could be named. You see, this year's lineup of machines was just so good that only one car obviously wasn't CotY material from the get-go. Can you guess which one judging from the list below?
- Aston Martin V12 Vantage S
- Audi R8 V10 Plus

Mini reveals refreshed Paceman in Beijing

It was just a few days ago that Mini unveiled its refreshed Countryman at the New York Auto Show, and now it has followed up with the revised version of that model's coupe counterpart, the Paceman. Revealed today at the Beijing Motor Show, the new Paceman adopts all the changes applied to the new Countryman - which is to say, not a whole lot, but maybe enough to keep it current for the masses of customers in the market for a three-door version of a vehicle that's bigger than its stablemates but smaller than most other crossovers.
Pictured here in Piano Black (one of three new shades on offer alongside Midnight Grey and the Jungle Green in which the new Countryman was featured), the mildly refreshed Paceman has, like its five-door counterpart, been so subtly updated that we can scarcely tell the difference... even after sorting through the press release below. There are some minor revisions to the exterior, the cabin features slightly updated equipment, and the Cooper S gets an extra few horsepower. And that's about all she wrote, folks.
Mini will offer the updated Paceman worldwide with a wide array of four-cylinder engine options. With no budget-oriented One model, the Cooper is the base model with a 122-horsepower version of the brand's ubiquitous 1.4-liter four and the John Cooper Works sits at the top of the range with 218 hp. The two diesel specs are present as well, and buyers cam choose (on most models) between front- and All4 all-wheel drive.

Mini Coopers make the best Pac-Man ghosts in Pixels movie trailer

The concept of fighting off real-world incarnations of classic arcade game characters out to destroy the Earth sounds like a rejected idea for an SNL Digital Short. But it's coming to theaters this summer in a film called Pixels starring Adam Sandler and Kevin James. Based on the trailer, it seems the premise of the film is that aliens receive a message from Earth and decide to fight back with vintage arcade characters, including ones from Space Invaders, Q*bert and Donkey Kong. To defeat these baddies, Sandler and Co must beat them in the style of their respective games. When it comes time to take out the giant glowing-yellow Pac-Man, their plan includes outfitting a quartet of Mini Cooper S models as the ghosts. Squint at the cars' license plates to spot a subtle, visual joke. They are called Inky, Pinky, Blinky and Clyde – the nicknames of the enemies in the arcade. While it could be argued that Sandler and James haven't quite been at the top of their games recently, the story here appears to boil down to Ghostbusters with video games, which could work purely on a nostalgic level if it's properly handled. Check out the trailer to spot even more vintage arcade references.