MINI Cooper S

The first car in which I travelled at 100mph was driven down the A1 outside RAF Wittering by a daredevil chum of my mum who had an entirely infectious smoker’s laugh and a Mini Cooper with an engagingly farty exhaust note. I have no idea how old she was, but I believe I was nine, or thereabouts, and beside myself with excitement…

The last time I drove an original Mini the helm was rigged to send the car in the opposite direction to that in which you steered. I can’t remember how old I was then, but I vividly recall an hilarious fifteen minutes of mayhem.

In between two said memorable events, most of my encounters with Minis left a smile on my face; the notable exception being the experience of a polytechnic pal who had the entire front half of hers removed, piecemeal, by a Routemaster bus -with a trill of gay laughter, she simply stepped out forwards, still clutching the steering wheel.

Fast forward to 2007 -the last time I drove a Cooper S- and BMW’s MINI marketing mob telling us that apparently 80% of us grin whenever we think of the original Mini. It further transpires that only 1 in 10 people have never sat in a Mini. And though, after a flurry of research amongst my immediate family, this figure seemed optimistic, it did serve to highlight just how all-pervasively the car –past and present- has penetrated the British motoring psyche.

Now, I was, I have to admit, wrong about BMW’s MINI. When it first surfaced in 2001 as another example of the German take on British automotive history, I confessed surprise at an absence of the mahogany dashboard and magnolia dials that so perfectly blighted the elegant Rover 75, owned up to the fact that it was a fantastic drive, and suggested that the English would turn their noses up and it would rise without trace.

But I failed to take note of three factors: the car’s extraordinary appeal to women; that fact that it was a hoot to drive; and BMW’s outstanding marketing skills. After all, any company making a success out of then head designer Chris Bangle’s dire looking crop of BMWs simply had to be a force to reckoned with.

Indeed, whilst more than 5 million examples of the original Mini were produced in 40 years, averaging 500,000 every four years, BMW’s tubby replica had already sold half a million in its first three years.

They also pointed out that, with a choice of some 50,000 combinations of options and accessories, only one in ten MINIs worldwide were currently identical. Which, given that it’s largely impossible to tell the difference between a passing MINI equipped with a cigarette lighter and one that isn’t, struck me as a tad disingenuous…

 The crisp, funky interior of BMW’s first 2001 MINI was quite the best thing to happen to the small car market for an age, but was clearly so expensive that its hardy surprising BMW struggled to make money on sales alone, despite the car’s success, and turned to the sale of options packs to realise a little profit here and there.

With over nine grand of options fitted to this particular Cooper S, one suspects that little has changed in that respect, despite the now commonplace practice of chucking of everything onto the wiring loom to make the punter think that design is keeping abreast of the digital age rather than just saving the manufacturer money…

Sleight of proportion still keeps the 2021 MINI looking far smaller than it actually is. You don’t need to see Mini and MINI side by side to note the significant difference in size, just check out how much room the driver of each occupies in their respective cabins; snug as the next sized Russian doll down in the former, a pea in an egg cup in the latter.

At the front, we now find a reverse Audi, with a body coloured bumperesque spar bisecting what would otherwise be the gaping maw of a startled guppy. The rear now features a quasi-diffuser treatment which mostly serves to highlight the central exhaust location of tradition. And in between, piano black replaces every inch of chrome trim on the rather elegantly hued window putty-grey specimen I drove.

On board, the central wok still dominates, adopting the MINI-standard format; a panorama-sized multi-information screen incorrectly installed in landscape rather than portrait format so that, when navigating, you see little of the road ahead yet masses of adjacent countryside you’re never going to visit.

Around the perimeter, a pointlessly fussy graphic remorselessly changes hue as it depicts everything from audio system volume to engine revs. I imagine it can be re-configured, but somehow, I just can’t be arsed to delve into the menu…

Then there’s a substantially less graphically elegant instrument binnacle which moves with the rake adjustment of the wheel, but not the reach. This is anything but classy in appearance, despite the fact that the rev counter is actually analogue presented to look digital. Huh?

The head-up display is in smoked glass, so merely interrupts your view forward as if a 1960s Joan Collins had left a pair of sunglasses on top of the dashboard. And everywhere else is occupied by toggle switches; A Pin-the-Toggle-on-the-Dashboard party game…

The driving position gives no cause for complaint, except for one major faux pas –the steering wheel rim. It’s far too fat and there are bulges on the inside of the rim even the Elephant Man would consider unseemly which force your hands down to from the ten to two position to a quarter to three; vast and obstructive. I don’t know whose idea it was to fit Bingo wings to road going helms, but it’s a lousy one…

Another irritation; despite the fact that BMW has abandoned the electronic indicator stalk in its cars, it has not, sadly, followed suit in MINIs.

Mechanically, the only significant change is in the suspension; the electronically controlled selectable set-up being here replaced by a passive arrangement that merely opens a valve in the damper over the more severe bumps and potholes to reduce damping force by up to 50%.

Not that you’d notice overmuch. The undercarriage struggles to keep the Cooper S tied down with anything approaching alacrity on all but the smoothest of surfaces, and this constant jostle is accompanied by a hefty dollop of road noise to boot.

Happily, however, there is a deal of fun to be found under the right foot. Two litres of turbocharged engine allied to flappy paddles in a car this size with a wheel at each corner would struggle to disappoint, and the MINI’s eagerness to be chucked about is matched by sufficient delivery of power and torque to readily take you up to, and beyond, the limits of adhesion. Oh, and, the brakes are first class…

Grippy, nimble and eager the Cooper S may be, but the helm -despite a tendency to fidget on straights- lets you know very little of what’s going on on the ground, and you have to rely on the seat of your pants for pretty much all road surface information.

Ghastly steering wheel design aside (and I wonder if there’s a sensible offering on the options list?) living with this car is akin to having an over-excited puppy in the house -hugely entertaining, but simultaneously sufficiently wearing that after a while you can’t wait for it to fall asleep.