Road Atlanta – AUSmotive.com

For those of you who have been following the MINI v Porsche challenge you’ll be pleased to know the results are in. The course was announced a couple of days ago and MINI USA provided a makeshift motorkhana style track for its Cooper S to take on the Porsche 911. Despite this attempt to tailor a course to in favour of the MINI’s excellent handling characteristics the result was predictable, as the grab above from the video shows.

You can watch the full race after the jump, including a pre-race interview with each of the driversâ€”Brad Davis (MINI) and Corey Friedman (Porsche). At this stage there’s been no official response from the man who started it all, MINI USA President, Jim McDowell. He has one last chance to save face, let’s see what he comes up with.

Over the years MINI’s marketing across the world has been first class; mostly cheeky, witty and engaging. This stunt, though, well, let’s hope it is only MINI USA that has jumped the shark.

[via Autoblog]

Hyundai v MINI

There’s big news for those who have been following the MINI USA challenge to race a Porsche 911. Like Porsche, you might have stopped worrying about the try hard Jim McDowell, even though there have been developments since our last updateâ€”including a Rocky IV spoof.

Back to that big news, well, the article title kind of gives it away I guess, but Hyundai have thrown their hat into the ring and have laid down a counter challenge to race MINI. After the break you can see the YouTube reply from the Korean upstarts who still have a lot to learn in Slick Marketing Presentations 101. (Although, the Hyundai Top Gear spoof was very well put together).

That said, in their 3.8 litre V6 Genesis CoupÃ©, Hyundai might have already prepared a match for the best MINI can offer around Road Atlanta. It seems this desperate PR stunt originally launched by MINI won’t go away, so let’s wait and see what happens next…