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MINI Knows Your "Carfun" Footprint

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MINI Knows Your "Carfun" Footprint

Marty Padgett

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Marty Padgett is High Gear Media's Editorial Director, overseeing the words that skim across High Gear Media's portfolio of automotive destinations... More

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2008 MINI Cooper Hardtop

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While Gores and bores worry about their 100-foot houseboat's carbon footprint, MINI's almost too clever ad agency has come up with the "Carfun Footprint"--a measure of how much enjoyment your car brings for its size.

The new campaign, from MINI agency Butler Shine Stern & Partners (BSSP) says its totally made-up index lets drivers know "how much fun your car is versus how much impact it has on the environment."

We're not normally keen on higher math, but the equation they offer makes sense--and thanks to an online calculator you don't even have to worry about how to tally up your car's score. Just go to their online application for the Carfun Footprint Calculator, and you can choose your make and model and see how it stacks up against 200 other vehicles. The criteria use data from Strategic Vision to determine how enjoyable and how "green" a car is from factors like recyclability to cradle-to-grave energy use in manufacturing.

A Toyota Prius, for example, gets a low fun score and a high green score for CarFun Footprint of 62, making it 11th of 197 cars. "True, it gets gas mileage," the voiceover says, "but what you gain in mpgs you lose in rpms."

It's entertaining and totally work-safe, but it is a shill, after all--and if you're using Firefox, be prepared to fiddle with settings for a while to make it work.

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Comment (1)

Bob Posted: 8/8/2008 4:53pm PDT

What a shocker, the Mini is the leader of this dubious score!
It would be nice if they just listed the rankings instead of having to suffer through the app.