I’m really not picking on Mini (see our other Mini based rant), but for this US version, what’s going on? The UK version has normal indicators set into the light cluster in a fairly normal manner. But with the US version, we’ll as they use the tail light as an indicator, things get a little weird…

I’m not a massive fan of the half union jack tail-lamps, but I like it when people try to do different, if sometimes it doesn’t always work out. And it’s a talking point perhaps, and of course, makes it stand out in some way. But it rerally hasn’t travelled well accross the ocean to the good old US of A.

Take a look at that picture, who when looking at that thought to themselves, that’s great, that’ll work out fine. That won’t confuse anyone at all when you’ve sometimes got very little time to make decisions on the road. Then, design for design sake not only doesn’t work, it can be simply dangerous. 

This is not the only issue these days, with non-standard gear selctors, switchgear and more, but… really! No one spotted this and thought, yeah, maybe not…?

Great design is a balance between the function of something, and it’s asthetics.