Critics sniffed when Mini introduced its Mini Cooper Countryman a few years ago. Here was a classic car brand known for making small, quirky machines that raced with the big boys, Little Engines That Could. Now Mini was diluting the legacy by pandering to the Compact Sports Utility Vehicle crowd. It was just another concession, in a long line of them, to the uneducated masses that didn’t understand automotive integrity.

Of course, if car writers ran the business, every vehicle would be stripped raw so as to maximize its lap time at Laguna Seca. But it turned out that BMW knew what it was doing with the Countryman. The vehicle became Mini’s second bestseller, just behind the iconic hardtop. Yes, the Countryman sacrificed a bit of performance for the sake of extra storage, but it didn’t sacrifice that much, and it was almost as cute as the original. It wasn’t Lady Sybil, but it wasn’t quite Lady Edith, either.

But whether or not it’s true that Mini lost its performance-based soul with the Countryman, the car’s success did have the unpleasant effect of causing the company to believe that it was something other than what it was. Now they’ve produced the totally fine Mini Cooper Paceman, essentially a coupe variant on the Countryman, with the same wheelbase and platform. As one of my fellow hacks wittily put it, “some people like doors, some people like fewer doors.” But Mini has decided to market this new car as the avatar of an irrepressibly wacky lifestyle brand.

For example: Last week, to celebrate the Paceman’s international cotillion, Mini flew dozens of car writers to Puerto Rico for 24 hours, for no other reason, they told us, than “it’s a nontraditional location for a product launch” and “people here know how to have a good time.” True statements, but still.

Immediately upon our arrival in Ponce, Puerto Rico’s second-largest city, Mini hustled us over to an architecture and design school, sat us in white plastic school desks in a hallway, and bathed us in an endless shower of marketing bull-pucky. Video screens, placed every few rows, played commercials that depicted Mini customers as irrepressible individualists who liked to “keep the kid inside alive,” a quality, according to the commercials, exemplified by driving around with a large psychedelically painted rubber duck on your roof.

Mini, the representatives of Mini said, is not a normal brand of car, according to its new slogan, “Not Normal,”displayed on ad posters thusly:

NOT

NOR

MAL

Mini is for “people who want to cut across the grain,” said a guy from Mini. He then asked us if any of us had gone to the Super Bowl. None of us had, unsurprisingly. Then he showed us a shot of him at a Super Bowl party, sponsored by Playboy Magazine, where he and several bunnies leaned against a Mini that was wearing a Mardi Gras mask.

Totally Not Nor Mal.

The car-writing gig resembles an endless episode of "The Amazing Race," except that not many women get to play and no one ever wins any money. Few people leave once they’ve weaseled their way into the rolling scam. But occasionally, some of the members of the corps will attempt to clear away their half-drunk, jet-lagged fogs and commit actual acts of journalism.

“Mini did really badly in recent quality and reliability studies,” one of them asked. “How do you respond to that?”

A murmur went through the desk-bound, as though we’d just watched a fellow slave throw off his chains.