Where Minis live forever

The Travel Essay is written by readers of the seattletimes.com. In this piece, Kathleen Vail-Hayden goes grooving in Malta:

That slogan is probably not the one to cause a stampede for the Air Malta ticket counter, but it would certainly have worked on me. I have a proud history with Mini Coopers, both the original funky model and the current adult BMW version that actually runs. That said, I am semi-ashamed to admit that what drew me to Malta was the accidental viewing of a '70s BBC detective series set there. Even though this program featured guys with unfortunate hair splattering bullets around the countryside and flinging themselves over cliffs, I got enough of a feel for the place to want to go. I launched my own personal stampede to Air Malta, sans gun but fully equipped with unfortunate hair.

Initially, I hadn't planned to rent a car, since Malta is very small and, judging from a sign advertising a nonstop bus to the Torture Museum, there was public transport. However, when I was having a restorative coffee after a disturbing hour among the racks and thumbscrews, I overheard someone mention a car to rent. The price was right, there weren't all those pesky forms to fill out and, best of all, the vehicle in question was a 1972 Mini Cooper..

I joined the herd of happy little vehicles with their happy little (or scrunched) drivers (squashed or not, you can't help being happy when you're driving a Mini), and pondered possible explanations for this embarrassment of Minis. Maybe because of all that time the country was under British rule? Surely not — the Knights of Malta had run things for years, too, and no one was scanning about in leftover tunics and armor.

Then I got it. Malta was Florida for Mini Coopers. This was where they retire to hang out in the sun, reliving zany trips to (and at) long-ago music festivals and aimless wild-night drives on a teaspoon of gas. Here on this little island Minis owned the road despite miserable Lucent electrics and engines so gutless they would be hard put to power a mid-sized blender. It all made sense. Malta is Mini heaven.