MINI Forum Acronyms.

by Steve Baker.

In the online MINI world, people use a lot of acronyms to describe their cars. This can be confusing to the newbie - so here is a handy guide.

Kinds of MINI

What kinds of MINI are there?

MO - MINI-ONE (not sold in the USA)
MO/D - MINI-ONE/D - the Diesel engined varient (not sold in the USA)
MC - MINI Cooper
MCS - MINI Cooper'S (the supercharged MINI)

Then we add another 'C' on the end if it's a convertible - hence:

MOC, MOC/D, MCC, MCSC.

We add an 'a' on the end if it's an automatic - hence:

MCSa, MCSCa

Sometimes you'll see CVT afterwards - which means the car has 'Continuously Variable Transmission' (whilst you might consider that to be an 'automatic', for some reason people don't stick the 'a' on the end for CVT's). Other times you'll see 'JCW' which means it has the John Cooper Works package. You might also see LSD - which in this context means 'limited slip differential'.

Colours?

Next comes all of the colours:

BRG - British Racing Green
CB - either Cosmos Black (discontinued), Candy Blue (never manufactured) or Cool Blue (convertible only)
CR - Chili Red
DS - Dark Silver
EB - Electric Blue
FO - Flamenco Orange (never manufactured)
HB - Hyper Blue
HO - Hot Orange (convertible only)
IB - Indi Blue (discontinued)
JB - Jet Black
LY - Liquid Yellow
PH - Purple Haze (also known as BEP - Black Eye Purple - which is what this colour is marketted as in England)
PS - Pure Silver
PW - Pepper White
SG - either Silk Green (discontinued) or Solid Gold
VR - Velvet Red (discontinued)

Note 1: Since Cool Blue is only available on Convertibles - and Cosmic Black was discontinued before the convertible came out, you can usually figure out which one is being talked about from the context. Candy Blue was only ever used on the early MINI concept cars.

Note 2: The confusion between Silk Green and Solid Gold has caused some people to try other acronyms - but they don't seem to catch on and usually, we are just confused. However, Silk Green was only available for about a year and it wasn't very popular even then - so when people say 'SG' it's generally safe to assume they are talking about Solid Gold.

When talking about the colour of the car, people generally name the colour of the body - then a '/' - then the colour of the roof (eg CR/W, BRG/B).

The roof colours acronyms are:

B - Black.
W - White (hardtops only)
DB - Dark Blue (convertibles only)
DG - Dark Green (convertibles only)

...and of course cars can have the same colour roof as the body - so you may see something like 'PW/PW' meaning a Pepper-White car with a matching roof.

Ordering and Delivering MINIs

MA - Motoring Advisor: The salesperson who sold you your MINI.
VDC - The Vehicle Distribution Center: The place where MINI's go as they come off the ship for the installation of some last-minute parts, more inspections, etc.
WW - Wallenius Wilhelmsen Carriers: One of two shipping lines who ship MINIs and BMWs from Europe to the USA. The other is 'K-Line'.

Other Acronyms

There are a few other MINI-specific acronyms - but they tend to come and go with fashion - and are not found on all MINI forums. On the MINI OL (Owners Lounge), people talk about three terrible (and very real) diseases:

MTF - MINI-tracking-fever (the obsession people have when their MINI is on order).
MOTB - MINI-on-the-brain (the continuing obsession people have AFTER their MINI arrives).
DBS - Dirty Bum Syndrome (the mess every MINI gets on it's tailgate!)

Aside from that, many of the usual Internet/eMail acronyms are used (ROTFL - Rolling on the floor laughing, IMHO - In My Humble Opinion, FWIW - For What It's Worth, YMMV - Your Milage May Vary, etc). I couldn't possibly cover them all here - a good guide to them (and all other computer jargon) is the ancient and venerable 'Jargon File':

http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/

Examples:

So - if someone is talking about an MCSC HO/B, you can instantly tell that they are discussing a MINI Cooper'S Convertible in Hot Orange with a Black roof. An MC CVT CR/W is a MINI Cooper with the continuously variable transmission in Chili Red with a white roof.