The English car company Mini Cooper has teamed up with the American rock band KISS to help Japan.
...meets...
The car company has painted four of their “Mini Countryman” cars with KISS make-up (one car for each of the original KISS members’ make-up) and they are currently being auctioned for charity via e-bay.
The auction ends at 4:00PM on 2011 June 8 (PST in the U.S.) (which is 8:00AM 2011 June 9 in Japan), so now is your chance to bid if you want one (or more) of these cars.
The current bid (when I wrote this post) is US$30,200 (about ¥2,421,834) for the cheapest one (the “Ace Frehley” design) and US$31,300 (about ¥2,510,047) for the most expensive (the “Gene Simmons” design).
All proceeds from the auction of these cars will be donated to UNICEF to help the victims of the earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan, as well as victims of other disasters around the world.
Here’s a picture of the cars (all of them are autographed by the current band members of KISS, incidentally):
I’m a big fan of KISS, but some the merchandise they release is too “over the top” for my taste (ie: the “KISS Casket“).
I can’t imagine myself driving around in one of those cars…but if I had to chose one—I think the “Gene Simmons / Demon” design is the best of the four.
It is very generous of KISS and Mini-Cooper to do this to help people in need.
How about you? What do you think of these cars?
Tokyo Five 
I don’t really like minis (especially because they are almost always covered with commercial in germany), but the finish on those cars is just awesome.
Nice to see how many people are trying to help japan, i saw some footage on nhk world the other day. seems like a lot of artists try to contribute in all ways they can. I just wish everyone in japan good luck and that something like this won’t ever happen again.
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>I just wish everyone in japan good luck
Thanks.
> and that something like this won’t ever happen again.
I wish that was possible too.
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I LIKE these cars a great deal. Then again, I’m a KISSaholic too. Like you. 🙂 This goes to prove that Gene Simmons and KISS are BIG hearted and KIND gentlemen. If I could bid on any one of those cars, I would go for Gene Simmons too, then try for Space Ace.
I wish I could afford to bid… If I did and I won, well, my wife would have me out the door packing! LOL.
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Oh, yes… a BIG Metal kudos to Mini-Cooper as well for this act of generosity. I did not want to ignore that fact.
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>BIG Metal kudos to Mini-Cooper
Yes. It’s kind of them.
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>my wife would have me out the door packing!
Well, maybe she’d forgive you if she knew it was for a good cause. 😉
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It’s a grand thing that KISS and Mini-Cooper are doing. I’m not a fan of KISS and I don’t plan to bid on one of the small cars, but I do have fond memories of its predecessor. I think that the earliest models were called Morris-Minors (?) in England, and was as close to basic transportation as possible. I could put one of the tiny cars in the trunk (boot) of the car I drive in the U. S. today (Well, almost.)
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>I’m not a fan of KISS
Well, we can’t all have good taste in music, I guess. 😉
>the earliest models were called Morris-Minors
What an odd name. “Mini-Cooper” is much better, I think.
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