We'll be honest – we were rather excited to see how a race between a Mini Cooper S and Porsche 911 Carrera S would go down. After Mini initially challenged Porsche to a trackday showdown at Road Atlanta on June 21, Porsche declined, saying that it will "stick to racing the way we have over the decades," and welcomed Mini to attend any sanctioned race where "there is more at stake than t-shirts and valet parking spaces."

Mini has had a very impressive response to this challenge, and isn't giving up. Mini USA boss Jim McDowell has issued yet another message to Porsche Cars North America CEO Detlev Von Platen saying that they're willing to raise the stakes, offering prizes such as Justin Bieber concert tickets (including backstage passes!), a lifetime membership to the Salami Of The Month club or even a (slightly used) home gym, among other things. Excellent.

We love Mini's enthusiasm over this whole event, and as we understand, Mini is even flying a banner plane over Porsche's Atlanta, Georgia headquarters with the message "Dear Porsche, Bring it. Love, Mini." Seriously. You can keep up with the whole back-and-forth on Mini USA's Facebook page. In any case, with only one week until the supposed race day, we hope Porsche will saddle up for this duel, even though Mini hasn't specified what the Road Atlanta challenge(s) will be (it could be an egg-carrying race for all we know) and Stuttgart really doesn't appear to have much to gain by picking on the little kid. Top tip, Brett!

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