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The manual transmission in the Mini Cooper is officially dead

We feared this might be the case after learning all about the latest Mini Cooper, but now it’s confirmed: The manual Mini is dead. Confirmation of the news comes from Mini boss Stefanie Wurst via an interview with Top Gear. “We wonÂ’t have a manual, unfortunately,” Wurst told TG in reference to the new generation of Cooper. Mini revealed its new model last week in the lead-up to the Munich Motor Show, and while the company was happy to share all the details on the electric E and SE, the gas models remained shrouded in a bit of mystery. We know there will be a base and an S model powered by gasoline engines, and now we know that they will be exclusively equipped with automatic transmissions. The elimination of the manual transmission is a tad ironic, given Mini just recently opened a Mini Manual Driving School in California. The point of that school was to teach people how to operate a manual transmission, but now Mini wonÂ’t have any in its lineup come 2025. This news was also foreshadowed a bit by the introduction of the Mini John Cooper Works 1 to 6 Edition earlier this year. Mini made that model as an ode to the manual, and it limited production to just 999 units worldwide. It looks like that special edition is more of a send-off to the manual transmission than anything at this point. As of now, you can still get the manual transmission on the Mini Hardtop and Convertible models, but the 2024 model year will be the end of this generation of Mini, and with it, the end of the manual transmission in the lineup. Related video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Green MINI Hatchback Electric

Watch this Chinese stunt driver parallel park with only 3 inches to spare

Whenever this writer thinks of fancy parking jobs, we go straight to Buddy Love singing Strokin' in a red Dodge Viper he slides into a tiny space in The Nutty Professor. But after watching the video above, we might have to start thinking about Han Yue, who broke the world record for getting into the tightest parallel parking space. The previous record was set in July 2013 by Alastair Moffatt, who had 3.4 inches to spare between his car and those around. Yue used a Mini Cooper at the China Drift Championship in Chongqing, China, to shrink that gap to 3.15 inches. That gave Yue two world records at the same event: the day before, he used a BMW M4 to set the world record for doing the most donuts around a car driving on two wheels. Which, frankly, we didn't even know was a competitive thing... Related Gallery 2014 Mini Cooper: First Drive View 47 Photos News Source: Guinness World Records via YouTubeImage Credit: Copyright 2014 Jeremy Korzeniewski / AOL MINI Hatchback Guinness World Records parallel parking

'Why isn't he stopping?' Mini driver describes being pushed sideways by dump truck

Yesterday, a video out of Toronto made the rounds on social media. It was scary to watch, as a dump truck pushed a Mini sideways a half-kilometer (third of a mile). But there were no details about why this accident happened or who was involved. Today, we know more:   This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Courtenay Erhardt, 26, is a nurse who was driving her Mini to a coronavirus vaccination site to administer shots to homeless people. She says she was waiting at a stoplight before heading up an onramp. “I was in front of him at that stoplight. We were both trying to get onto the Gardiner (Expressway)," she told the Toronto Star, which has a photo of Erhardt and a close-up look at the Mini stuck to the Kenworth's bumper. "He hit me from behind when we were merging." "[The dump truck] just sort of bumped my back rear-end and unfortunately I went sideways and the truck just continued to go up the ramp," Erhardt told CTV News Toronto. "I just remember holding my horn and my steering wheel and just screaming. Just like bawling and screaming. I honestly didn't know if my Mini was going to flip, or veer out into oncoming traffic on the Gardiner," she said. "I just remember thinking, 'Why isn't he stopping? Why is he still going?'" A couple in another car behind the truck saw smoke coming off the truck and knew something was wrong, Erhardt said. They pulled up alongside her, saw what was going on, then pulled ahead of the truck and forced it to stop. They called 911 and helped Erhardt escape her car. The truck driver, Erhardt said, emerged. “He said, ‘I didnÂ’t see youÂ’ and asked me not to call the cops. He asked if he could pay for the damages. He was young.” He has been charged with several offenses, Toronto police said.  Police Sgt. Murray Campbell released a statement to CTV saying, "Operators of large vehicles do not have the benefit of such lower/smaller vehicles, in their ability to see out of windows in all directions," implying the truck driver couldn't see the small car beneath his hood. Campbell advised motorists to make sure they can see truck drivers so the truck drivers can see them.  Which is good advice. That said, this truck driver surely felt that something was wrong — and heard the sounds that we can hear in the video. Erhardt, though terrified, was not injured. She credits the couple who helped her, along with the Mini Cooper.