Today is our transatlantic cruise day from Southampton to Halifax… Well not for Scott and I, but for our MINI.

Some interesting factoids:

• Our MINI was the 33rd to be placed on the ship at 12:55pm – I’m not sure if they’re using UTC or British time (BST/GMT)
• They started loading at 12:17pm, the last MINI to be loaded was 2:40pm
• There are 180 MINIs that were supposed to be part of the shipment with a bunch flagged as “Return to Shipper” at 5:07pm, ours is not one of them.  Doh!  I hope nothing is up with the cars and that has to suck for the owners!

According to the Port of Southampton Vessel Traffic Services, the Torrens is set to sail at 10pm tonight from dock 44, which is in the Ocean Dock area.

Cars Live is a really cool broadcast from the BBC that documents the life of a car at… Plant Oxford, the primary home of the MINI Cooper.

The broadcast was done over two nights in the UK on October 20th and October 21st.

Our car was completed production on October 21 and was on the same production line as the show was filming – live!  Though it is doubtful it got any camera time, there were a few VINs shown during the show that I was able to confirm on BIMMER.WORK and yes, our car was in fact finished production at the same time based on the VINs I checked out.

Some interesting things I learned from the broadcast

• No wonder the car comes with about 30km on it – Each car goes on a test drive to confirm it’s okay over several types of pavement
• MINI/BMW have their own train sets that send cars to Southampton for shipping overseas
• Each train set can carry 300 cars over half a kilometre long
• It takes 3 hours to get to Southampton
• There are 2 trains every day
• The cars leave within 24 hours of completion
• There are at least 5 to 10 people who drive you car before you do
  • Tester
  • Transport from MINI
  • Transport off of the train in Southampton
  • Transport on to the ship in Southampton
  • Transport off the ship in Halifax
  • Transport on to the train in Halifax
  • Transport off the train in Halifax
  • On to a truck
  • Off the truck
  • Two or three people at the dealer

This could mean, our car, barring any issues is actually in Southhampton awaiting loading on a ship.

This is exciting!

It’s now 11 days since we agreed to purchase our MINI and…

We have a production date according to Bimmer.work and it’s today!  That means that over at Plant Oxford, or MINI is being built which takes 6 to 10 days although some threads have said this date is the date the drivetrain and chassis are married.

So it could mean, a new car has official entered into the world, rather than individual parts!

After that it takes a trip on a train to Southampton, boards a car transport ship and makes it’s way to the Halifax Auto Port where it will board another train to somewhere outside Toronto.  If all goes will that takes 20 to 30 days.

That means we could actually have the MINI by December!  Early Christmas gift for Scott and me?

Surprising given we were originally going to be locked into a November production date.  It’s very nice to see us brought up early to October.

Now Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics has the following schedules from Southampton to Halifax.  If production happens as I think it will, then I am guessing the car will be on the November 2nd or 8th sailing on the Tombarra or Toledo.  October 25th would be too aggressive, but if production does mean that it’s coming off the production line as of today or tomorrow (22nd or 23rd), then it could mean we are on the Torrens!

You can enter your VIN in the Cargo ID field and it will confirm the ship, port of entry, etc…

Yesterday my dealer told me that we have a VIN and passed it over to me.

The VIN is quite a powerful number right now because this allows me to track the creation of our new car.  Sadly, BMW Canada nor MINI have a site I can login to to track this, like BMW in the US does.

That does’t mean having the VIN is for naught, for I can go to bimmer.work, enter the last 7 digits of my VIN and find all out kinds of stuff about my car, such as:

• It is indeed a left hand drive
• 5 doors
• It’ll have a B36M engine in it
• Manual transmission as ordered
• It is in Electric Blue (B86)
• We don’t know the Production Plant or Production Date yet, but I am pretty sure it will be Plant Oxford.

The site also confirms all of the standard equipment and options that we selected with the vehicle.

So, MINI doesn’t always do a good job of explaining options and one is the Adaptive Headlight Functionality. An example is here, although using Xenon rather than LED:

The lights follow the curve of the road based on your steering which is cool.

Here is what you’ll find on BMWs:

Theirs will actually re-angle the lights if there’s oncoming traffic, if you’re driving up behind someone. Very cool!

MINI’s are definitely more limited. Here is what they provide from the website:

Dark, winding roads have nothing on a MINI. Our optional LED headlamps feature an auto-levelling system that adjusts their angle based on your MINI’s speed and weight. And with the cornering lights upgrade, your MINI’s Adaptive Headlights react to your steering and “turn with you”, thereby illuminating what’s coming around the bend.

Fair enough. 🙂

While Plant Oxford does tours of the assembly of MINI vehicles, you can’t take photos during the trip, and unfortunately I don’t have the time to head to the UK to do the tour of where our car is being assembled.

I can, however bring a bunch of videos to you from YouTube courtesy of various shows and MINI/BMW themselves:

Stamping:

Production 1 of 3:

Production 2 of 3:

Production 3 of 3:

Another production video:

Timelapse of the Assembly – Includes the train ride to the ship and loading onto the ship:

We ordered our vanity plates for the MINI today.  What we chose is kind of funny given the car is not Japanese but British/German

• Kuma – Kanji: 熊, Hiragana: くま, Katakana: クマ – for Bear, perfectly representing Scott and me.
• Kart – For, well, that go-kart feel you get with the MINI Cooper

Other contenders that made the list:

• MINIBEAR – English
• MINIBAER – German
• KUMACART – Bear Cart
• KUMAKART – Bear, Go Kart
• MINIKUMA – Bears in a MINI
• 3XTRM1N8 – Exterminate – Yes we got very Whovian
• D4LEK – Dalek
• ASIMIL8 – Assimilate
• SL8Z – See you later in L337 speak
• IBKUMASB – Our initials
• IBKARTSB  – Our initials
• P1NTS1Z3 – Pintsize
• TUR580 – Turbo
• TUR58O – Turbo
• DIETSUV – Joking about size
• FILLMEUP
• H4LFP1NT – Half pint
• H4LFPINT – Half pint

Sadly variants on TARDIS were all taken.

The dealer thought it took about 6 to 8 weeks to get our plates.  Hopefully they’ll arrive within the month.