I was cleaning out my little brother’s room a couple of days ago, and I came across an interesting little pamphlet entitled “Men of Metal: Eyewitness Accounts of Humanoid Robots,” purporting to be an excerpt from a book written by a British journalist who had chronicled the paranormal happenings in the countryside surrounding the town of Oxford, England. When I was a kid, I was a sucker for Sasquatch, the Loch Ness monster, the Abominable Snowman, the Bermuda Triangle, and pretty much everything else. So naturally, I was fascinated by this new twist of the paranormal. As I started to read, I became engrossed by this well-written, believable account of a journalist who was investigating the reports of giant androids roaming the Oxford countryside, aiding motorists who were in danger. As his investigation proceeded, he came across the name of Dr. Colin Mahew, a design engineer and robotics enthusiast who was involved with the Mini Cooper’s design team. Though his questions to the good doctor were fruitless, the journalist was led to believe that Mahew had “overengineered” the Mini Cooper to allow it to be retrofitted to become a gigantic android. The pamphlet’s arguments were interesting and didn’t smell of conspiracy theory, but being the unbeliever that I am, despite my early interests, I packed the pamphlet away, intending not to think about it again. However, I had this nagging recollection of a graphic design site that I visited some time ago that featured some transformer-esque Mini Cooper androids. So today I decided to let the all-powerful Google answer my questions.

What I turned up wasn’t really shocking, actually. These androids actually exist! In fact, they can be seen starring in this commercial. But seriously, apparently the marketing firm that BMW had hired placed these false book excerpts in Automobile, Rolling Stone, and other magazines to create a buzz. There were fake websites created to corroborate the story, thus lending credibility to the tale of android Mini Coopers. Ultimately, the hoax was unveiled in the form of toys and a prominent ad in downtown New York. So in the end it was all just a clever marketing ploy, but it was definitely memorable, and somewhat viral. There was definitely a lot of discussion previous to the hoax’s resolution. So that’s the story. There are no giant android-Mini Coopers roaming the Oxford countryside. That’s because they’re in Oregon, hanging out with Bigfoot.