When I am not playing with my sim or creating for the sims games, I love to drive my car. I wanted my sim to be able to drive the same type of car as I do - but nobody had made it. So I made it myself, the car that create a style was made for - the BMW Mini Cooper.

When you buy a Mini Cooper in RL you can customise the bodywork quite a bit - different coloured roof, wing mirror and bodywork. You can also add stripes to the bonnet (hood for you Americans out there).

I worked hard on optimising its create a styleness - so I have made 6 presets using the masks and the stencils.

All car presets have the three basic recolourable channels - ROOF, WINGMIRROR, BODYWORK.

• Preset 1 = the stripes on the bonnet are the same channel as the wingmirrors - so you can have stripes to match the wing mirrors.
  
• Preset 2 = the white stripes on the bonnet are hardcoded - you can't change the colour of the stripes - see presets 5 and 1 for other colour options for the stripes
  
• Preset 3 = no stripes, minimal chrome on the front grille
  
• Preset 4 = for all you Anglophiles - the colour paint job that I always wanted but never dared to get - the Union Jack Roof and white stripes on the bonnet . NOTE: You can change the colour of the roof but there is no point as the Flag covers it. The white stripes are no longer hard coded - they are based on the roof colour set - see change log for detail.
  
• Preset 5 = the black stripes on the bonnet are hardcoded - you can't change the colour of the stripes - see presets 1 and 2 for other colour options for the stripes
  
• Preset 6 = lots of chrome, no stripes.

The easy way to remember which is which is that all the presets with stripes are with a fancy roof, the non striped have a plain roof.


Its my first car and the most complicated object for TS3 that I have made so far, and so, its not perfect......

Known Issues

• The body was very well mapped by the original creator, and I did not mess with that. It looks good patterned, but the patterns do not line up EXACTLY. You can see the join between the wing and the sidepanels, but I think its ok - damned close.
• The door is not animated (no TS3 car doors are)
  
• The mini is cloned from the sportscar (so that the wheels would match up) and as a result the sim sits too low in the car and the driving anims are off. You can see it in the night time shot.
  
• The wheels do not turn - I asked around the modders community and this is a known issue with custom cars
  
• Sometimes, when turning a corner, the lights sort of disengage from the body - and then catch up again. I do not know why this is so, again, its part of finding out how objects work.
  
• There is no mirror glass in the wing mirrors - again, this is true of all custom cars. I did update the file with a lighter grey texture, so if you downloaded BEFORE 02:00 on 14-03-2010 and this bothers you, please redownload.

Change Log
14 March 02:20

• Updated the overlay to show "mirror glass"
• Realised there was no need to hardcode the white stripes on the flag version - assigned the stripes to the roof colour set as the flag is obscuring that channel

Prices and Catalogue Location
In the vehicles category at a very reasonable 35000 simoleons.


Game Compatibility:
I had this tested in WA and HELS - it worked fine in both and in my base game.

Sims3Pack If you would like this item as a sims3pack, I have made it available on my own site, Leefish. Click Here for link

Polygon Counts:
A rather staggering 10870 polys. This is the same for ALL LODs. I have a rubbish PC and its fine in game.

Additional Credits:
I did not make or texture this mesh myself - all credit for that is due to the original makers, my thanks to Jonathan for permission to use this mesh.

Mesh Creators
Jonathan Mace (jon@gamemods.fsnet.co.uk) and Stecki (stecki@quakerally.com), purchased from www.turbosquid.com.

Yet More Credits
TSR workshop - presets are fun to do!
FreshPrince for being supportive and helping me along
My testers, Davey and Dal.
Delphy for the sims3pack -> package extractor

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2035 people have said thanks to leesester for this download.

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