Mini's new Roadster is making European headlines, but not of the sort parent company BMW was wanting. Photo / Supplied
It sounded like a cool marketing move by BMW: paying to have the name of its Mini Cooper Roadster associated with the cold snap engulfing Europe.
But the car manufacturer has been left rueing its decision after the freezing weather killed more than 70 people.
The death tolls were highest
in Poland and the Ukraine where at least 40 people have died and more than 500 needed hospital care. Temperatures have plummeted as low as -33C since the weekend, as the cold front from Siberia has extended westwards over central and south-eastern Europe.
The mounting fatalities lent a sinister aspect to Germany's practice of allowing companies to sponsor high and low pressure weather systems. BMW, it emerged yesterday, paid the trifling sum of A299 to get the current cold front - named 'Cooper' to advertise its Mini - before it started claiming lives. The company plans to name a low pressure area 'Minnie' later this year.
Germany is the only country outside the US to name weather systems. BMW said yesterday that it regretted that people had died as a result of Cooper. "Of course we are sorry. It was not intentional, you cannot tell in advance what a weather system will do," a company spokeswoman told The Independent.
