While some of the early MINIs had “anemic” horns, the horn in my 2006 just sounds… average.
Average in every way. Volume, tone, resonance… it sounds pretty much like every “normal” car horn out there.
I guess I shouldn’t complain. Some owners of early MINIs have complained that nobody can hear their little toy-car-sounding “beep beep”. Other people can certainly hear my horn. They just don’t care very much. When I sound the horn, their response is:
1) Think, “Hmmm. Somebody in some kind of car is honking their horn.”
2) Think, “Hmmm. I wonder why they’re honking it.”
3) Think, “Hmmm. I wonder if they’re honking at ME?”
4) Turn to look and see where it’s coming from and whether it might have something to do with THEM.
And, of course, by this time I have already used my cat-like reflexes and the MINI’s legendary agility to evade whatever idiotic thing they were doing that made me honk in the first place.
If they’re, say, pedestrians crossing against the light, they look up and say “Oh, it’s just one of those clown cars” and keep right on doing what they’re doing.
See? Worthless.
The PDX (Portland) MINI Club took a weekend trip to one of my favorite places last fall - Orcas Island. Orcas is the largest of the San Juan Islands, in the northern end of Puget Sound. There are no bridges to the San Juans… so most people arrive there by ferry (private boat and small plane are your other options).
As much as I’d like to take this same trip, it’s a bit far to drive (about 3.000 miles each way). So I started thinking about what we could do closer to home that would have a similar “cool” factor. Well, North Carolina has its own gem of an island - Ocracoke. This former stomping ground of Blackbeard the Pirate has a lovely little village and 16 miles of the most beautiful undeveloped beaches in the United States. I polled our local club and lots of people were interested in a weekend run to Ocracoke - so we scheduled one! It’s pretty much impossible to get lodging for large groups during the season - so we picked one of the last “pre-season” weekends.