2006 Mini Cooper Base Hatchback 2-door 1.6l on 2040-cars

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Mini Paceman modified by Roberto Cavalli for annual Life Ball charity

This year's award for Life Ball Mini designer goes to Roberto Cavalli. The Life Ball is a charity event held in Vienna, Austria every year that raises money to fight the spread of HIV and AIDS. Since 2001, the year of its reintroduction, Mini has been involved with the ball, auctioning a car that has been made over by a world-famous designer. This year Cavalli gets the nod and a Paceman for a canvas.
The iridescent brown/black paint is the eye-catcher in the sketch above (click to enlarge), but don't forget to note Cavalli's logo on the roof. We're not sure what other flourishes he has in mind for the car, but those in attendance will find out on May 24 when it's unveiled at the Cavalli store opening in Vienna. The press release below has more details.

Mini Art Beat is a loud, driving social media billboard

Video billboards are nothing new, but a video on a moving car that's blaring music? Now that's something that will catch your attention - especially if you're driving alongside it in the streets of London.
That's the exact intent of Mini's new Art Beat, a Cooper Countryman turned marketing device that is custom-fitted with a staggering 48,000 LEDs. On its nightly drives through the city, the compact crossover showcases brightly colored videos, graphics and animations contributed by people around the world via social media. The Mini Space Blog describes the Art Beat as the "most vibrant and customizable NOT NORMAL ride you'll ever lay eyes on."

2015 Mini John Cooper Works Hardtop First Drive [w/video]

In its previous iteration, the Mini John Cooper Works three-door was a bad little mother. It looked like an engorged puffer fish facing down a shark, sounded like squadron of hornets with even the tiniest provocation of the throttle, and turned corners like it was angry at them. It was hard riding and ill mannered in all sorts of daily driving situations, but supremely satisfying when used in the all-out-attack mode for which it was designed. I dug every minute I spent in one, when really concentrating on driving. (As a commuter or passenger, not so much.) It only took fifteen minutes of driving on the lilting, tree-lined roads outside of New Haven, CT, to realize that the 2015 Mini JCW Hardtop was a lot less pissed off. And with more power, refined ride quality, a better interior, and an available automatic transmission, a lot more suitable for a wide variety of drivers. The little hellion has matured. On that grownup tip, the first of the many '15 JCWs I sampled was fitted with a six-speed automatic transmission. Cue collective shocked gasp. I'll forgive you if you didn't know an auto was going to be available equipment on the JCW, as Mini product planners had to remind me that it had been offered for the first time on the model-year 2013 car. Even then, the manual trans saw an impressive 75-percent take rate, so it's not as if many of the auto-shifters made it to the street. That could change in this new generation, where the 6AT acquits itself quite well. Wheel-mounted paddles offer near immediate response to requested shifts, and programming for the sport setting causes gears to be held up to the top of the tach. The manual is far more engaging, even if the automatic is quicker than the human hand. The six-speed Getrag manual transmission is still the better option, even the car is two-tenths of a second slower to 60 miles per hour with it (6.1 vs. 5.9 seconds), and less fuel efficient in the city (23 vs. 25 miles per gallon). The manual uses a long-levered shifter that still feels positive going between gates, and a short-travel clutch that's got nice weight and an easy catch point. It also offers defeatable rev matching, smoothing out even very aggro downshifts. Mini measures the manual as slower than the auto, but I had a lot more fun using it to harness the increased power of the 2.0-liter turbo four-cylinder engine.