Mini Cooper '98

[X-Power]

They say the Ford Escort is British.

That's a tricky car to classify, since the standard car was built in Germany for the continental European market but built in England for the UK market. So, it's both German and British. If we're talking about the Escort WRC version, then that was enginereed by Cosworth (a UK company) so it is mostly British. So, the Escort WRC featured in the game is British but incorrectly listed as American.

To be honest, I think PD should hide each cars nationality in future GT games, since most cars are multi-national these days, they can't really be given a country of origin. Take the Chevrolet Camaro SS '10 for instance, that was engineered in Australia, built in Canada and wears an American badge. So, it's not really American... it's Austranadican. 💡

 

[analog]

I doubt it's a bug or a mistake. Licensing for every car on the game comes from somewhere. When BMW bought the Rover Group, they found that Rover was in such bad shape that the best they could hope to do was extract anything potentially profitable, and sell off the Rover Group.

One of the things BMW kept was the rights to the name 'Mini'. So guess who gives the yes or no when it comes to the game licensing? Yep, the German guys who own it.

Mind you, BMW proceeded on a serious letter-writing campaign after buying the Rover Group. BMW attorneys threatened a lawsuit against every company that supported the original Mini, and had the word 'Mini' in their name. Most of these were small businesses, and not prepared to fight a giant like BMW in court, so they often abandoned the name. As far as BMW goes, the name is theirs, and they paid for it. I seriously doubt this is a mistake or a bug, but somebody at PD or Sony who dealt with the licensing issues could tell you more.

Although that's very true and probably the main reason the new Minis are labelled German I think it's also due to PD being somehow unable or unwilling (as in can't be bothered) to attach different country of origin labels to the same brand name.
That's why for example the Ford Focus or RS200 are labelled American (the Focus is actually Anglo-German which perhaps complicates the matter in this case) and according to this logic Opel and Vauxhall should be American too but since these have a different name than their parent company their country of origin are correctly shown.
So it appears it's one nation for each brand and since the majority of Minis in GT5 are the newer ones they chose German for all, even though the old Mini can't be described being remotely German at all.

 

[raybould1345]

I agree with you. It's quite annoying that they classed it as a German car. I think it does say in the description though about the older models being British, not entirely sure though.

surely they wernt still making them in 98!?

Yes, The last old shape was made in 2000 by Rover.

 

[pedrocor]

I know we are spending a lot of time talking about this, but we need to rest a bit from playing...

The original Mini was "property" of MG Rover, a company owned in 1998 by BMW, contrary to the "new Mini", which is branded simply as Mini, not MG, Rover or BMW. Mini brand, related to the new models may be considered German, but not the old ones.

If we think about ownership of brands, Holden, Opel and Vauxhall cars should be American, as the brands were owned by General Motors, Infiniti should be Japonese as it's owned by Nissan and so on...

 

[599GT]

McLaren F1 GTR Long Tail is a BMW, according to GT5...
It's built by McLaren for BMW not vice versa.

On topic, the '98 Mini is the tradicional Mini as we know it. It's not german nor is it a BMW by any means!

 

[analog]

Perhaps a little known fun fact but the boss of BMW at the time of the MG-Rover takeover, Bernd Pischetsrieder, is a first cousin of Alec Issigonis (the creator of the original Mini).
Maybe that's the reason BMW took over that firm, you know, blood being thicker than water, etc.
Pischetsrieder also once famously totalled a brand new McLaren F1 by the way......