MINI Cooper 5-door
- Welcome back MINI - it's been a while
- Maxi MINI mustering mostly muted mirth
- Warming up to our MINI
- iDrive you crazy
- Light (almost) fantastic
- An enlightening diesel diversion
- An (un)sticky situation
- MINI irritations
- Revelations and gratifications
- Optional vex-tras
- When MINI met Mini
- Goodbye MINI, it’s been…
Welcome back MINI - it's been a while
Mark has a bit of history with the MINI. It started when he bought a first-generation One in 2004. Which turned out to be a bit of a disaster.
Date: 7 October 2015 | Current mileage: 1206 | Claimed economy: 60.1mpg | Actual economy: 40.5mpg
I have a bit of history with BMW-era MINI. It started when I bought a first-generation One in 2004. It was a bit of a disaster to be honest.
Within a month of buying it, I was made redundant from my job pretending to conduct telephone market research surveys. And so within six months I had to sell it to my dad, who promptly gave it to my younger sister when he realised it suited him in the same way a pair of gold Nike Air Jordans would have.
It was a black MINI One D – the first diesel MINI with the 75PS 1.4-litre Toyota engine and that most car magazines I was reading at the time thought was a bit rubbish. We bought it at six months old and the story the selling dealership gave was that it had been bought new by a well-off bloke for his wife. She had promptly got bored with the colour and exchanged it for a red one at great cost.
That story was probably absolute rubbish, but for Mrs Nichol and me (recently married at the time) it gave the car an even greater sense of pretentious cool: “this here be the sort of runabout that a rich man buys then discards because of something as frivolous as colour!” I didn’t see at the time that this thought process made us as idiotic as them, if they existed.
The spec was just weird. It was on 14-inch alloy wheels, but for some reason the (probably non-existent) first owners had optioned the Cooper S body kit, which was evidently designed for a car on 17-inch wheels at least. On one hand that gave it the appearance of the world’s smallest (and least gangsta) lowrider, but it also meant it had less ground clearance than an F1 car.
Sure enough, a few months after my dad bought it he discovered that the front bumper was only barely clinging to the body, such was the beating it had taken every time car went over a speed bump. Or had its brakes gently applied.
We’d also traded in my wife’s perfectly functional first-generation Renault Clio – her first ever car and an surprise 18th birthday gift from her parents – for the exact price it cost us to have our MINI’s ridiculous silver viper stripes applied: £300.
Again, stupid. But there was something about that car – about that brand. It was so alluring that it didn’t matter that it made no sense on most levels, especially financially. We loved it. I’ve since run a second-generation MINI Clubman JCW. I loved that as well.
What point was I making again? Oh yes, my name’s Mark and I love MINIs. That’s my confession. So let’s see what this new MINI Cooper five-door does for my particular predilection over the next six months…
Maxi MINI mustering mostly muted mirth
Mark's first few weeks with the five-door MINI hatchback isn't quite living up to his high expectations.
Date: 21 October 2015 | Current mileage: 2055 | Claimed economy: 60.1mpg | Actual economy: 41.2mpg
Last month I spent many paragraphs rambling on about the first MINI I bought. The point I was making (if it wasn’t clear) was that I really like the BMW-era MINI, but I don’t really know why. I feel like I shouldn’t. I don’t know why that’s the case either.
Somehow, someway, a MINI provokes a particular response. That’s probably what I like about it, because as cars get better and better, they tend to get more and more mundane or predictable. See the new Audi A4 for examples.
So it’s with a hint of sadness that I must begin this few months’ worth of MINI-based ponderings with disappointment. Yep, this is not becoming the five-star MINI adventure I’d hoped for.
My first trip from Peterborough to Newcastle was not a comfortable one. At 6ft4 most people laugh when I tell them I drive a MINI. But in fact it’s got one of the best and least cramped driving positions around – always has had.
However, there was something about the combination of the seat itself and the appallingly hard ride quality that made it very hard work up the M1.
It also feels asthmatic below about 4000rpm. And resultantly not feel as quick as its claimed 7.9-second 0-62mph time would have you believe. It’s a good example of why this particular benchmark has far too much significance. The MINI Cooper will get past 62mph in second gear, which no doubt helps dip its time into the sevens but doesn’t tell you just how much wringing out this engine needs to get the best from. A diesel with a 7.9-second 0-62mph time will feel much quicker than this, most of the time.
That’s not to say it’s a bad engine – it’s a great engine in fact, which we’ll speak in much more detail about in later updates – but rather that it has a frustrating lack of punch at lower revs, which means a frustrating amount of gear-changing.
There’s a frustrating amount of fuel-filling so far too. The fuel tank is also mini by nature (40 litres) and at the moment the car’s giving us about 40mpg – again, far lower than the expectation delivered on paper. And again, something we’ll come back to in future. So it’s been a turbulent first few weeks. There are plenty of reasons to believe to get much better, though…
Warming up to our MINI
It's not been the instant love affair we thought it might be with the MINI, but things are looking up.
Date: 4 November 2015 | Current mileage: 2286 | Claimed economy: 60.1mpg | Actual economy: 41.2mpg
Our time with the MINI Cooper didn’t start off too well. In a nutshell, the engine felt underpowered, the ride quality was a cause for concern and if we’d bought a Mars Bar every time we stopped for fuel we’d have Type 2 diabetes by now.
But we closed by saying there were signs of improvement. Well, not so much that – the ride won’t get any softer nor the fuel tank any bigger – but rather a willingness to live with those things in exchange for the MINI experience.
I have to admit that when I first saw a five-door MINI at the 2014 Paris Motor Show I did a real-life LOL – it just looked absolutely massive. But time and familiarity have shrunk it back down again (just as it has with every newer and bigger MINI) and the result is that it pulls off quite a trick.
The five-door MINI still feels compact and short, absolutely planted and entirely predictable on the road – a combo that MINI boils down to two hyphenated words beginning with ‘G’ and ‘K’, but we won’t go there – yet it’s genuinely a passable family car.
We have no problem getting the four of us in our MINI, the only minor problem being access – the rear doors are so short that even the kids (six and eight years old) think they’re a bit awkward. That said, one of my boy’s mates got in the other day and immediately laughed at “how small it is in here.”
But as my boy pointed out, his friend's dad's car doesn't have “sweet inside lights that change colour”. So there. The kids love the MINI.
The boot is a particular highlight and another example of the difference between the MINI on paper and in real life – something we’ve already noted with the engine stats. This time it’s a positive though, because while the 278-litre boot space appears small (a Skoda Fabia has a 300-litre boot, for example), it’s got one of the cleverest twin-floor mechanisms there is.
The false floor that sits flush with the boot lip (making loading easier) lifts up and neatly clips to the back of the rear seats, which is a very simple but very useful solution to the standard detachable floor that generally ends up hanging around the house somewhere like a removed parcel shelf. The little things like that make the MINI feel good.
iDrive you crazy
The MINI's iDrive-based infotainment system doesn't quite match the car's youth pretensions. Doesn't at all, in fact.
Date: 25 November 2015 | Current mileage: 2732 | Claimed economy: 60.1mpg | Actual economy: 41.5mpg
It’s time to talk infotainment. I’ve got a thing about infotainment, because I feel it’s an area that car manufacturers are generally struggling to come to terms with. Some, like Volkswagen, are really starting to get it right (so that's one thing at the moment, at least), by embracing technology like Apple Carplay and generally understanding the importance of intuitiveness over form.
BMW was an early adopter of in-car infotainment as we know it now, introducing its iDrive system in 2001’s ‘Bangle Butt’ 7 Series. It was at best clunky and at worst baffling, but it was a start.
The iDrive system has, of course, got better through the generations, but today you could argue that BMW’s early adoption of all-in-one-place infotainment has become a hindrance. While other manufacturers move on with ever improving touchscreens – Jaguar, for example – BMW has persisted in refining the same basic scroll-wheel setup for years.
It’s the same system that’s in the MINI, albeit tarted up slightly to look more youth-ish (tarted down, if you like.) It’s pretty. Pretty messy.
Maybe it’s just because the MINI is so obviously meant to be a ‘young person’ product, but nobody with a decent smartphone could possibly think that the MINI’s iDrive-style media setup, with its rotary dial operation and menu layers, is actually instinctive.
In fairness, the six shortcut buttons under the screen help – you can program them to anything you like, from a radio station, to an address on the navigation or a phone number – but outside of those six things, it always seems to take one or two more steps or symbols or buttons than it should do to get where you want to be.
This is a missed opportunity. I remember a few years back going to a ‘the future of cars according to BMW’ type day in Germany. Ages it lasted. And among the seminars about the future of suspension bushes and seat fabric trends was a MINI-inspired look at all-singing, all-dancing, cloud connected infotainment.
BMW made it seem like those floating swipey screen things from Minority Report were coming to a MINI near you very soon, whereas what we actually have is something akin to an iPad with an Etch-A-Sketch dial attached to it.
Maybe I’ll get used to it…
Light (almost) fantastic
'Just gimme the light' sang Sean Paul, but clearly Sean Paul's never had to deal with two kids squabbling over a MINI's interior LEDs.
Date: 9 December 2015 | Current mileage: 2958 | Claimed economy: 60.1mpg | Actual economy: 40.4mpg
The MINI five-door is not a family car. You know this. However, by adding the rear doors and making the boot bigger, MINI has deliberately enticed family buyers.
Obviously MINI was careful not to ever mention the word “family” when it introduced the new five-door model, instead choosing euphemisms like “fresh group of customers”. But the hope that some style-before-substance parents will take the bait is an obvious one and and there’s nothing wrong with that.
The reality is that before the four of us (that being me, my wife and our two kids) get into the MINI, there’s usually a debate to settle about which child “sits in the small space” behind me, the giant driver. However, in all other ways my kids love the car.
In fact, so filled with personality is the MINI that, in my children’s minds, it’s ensconced in the third tier of car awesomeness behind vans (you can run around in those) and supercars (they make loud noises).
A big reason for that is the interior lights, which by virtue of offering many selectable colours, are the most awe-inspiring feature of any car my children have been in. And they’ve been in a car while it self parks.
At first this was fantastic. Rear seat argument about to boil over? “Look kids! Look at the pretty lights!” Need to inform them they're about to be dragged to Aldi, again? “Look kids! Look at the pretty lights.” It’s a fantastic and surprising deception tool and one that MPV manufacturers should consider as an optional extra: the LED Child Bamboozlement Device.
But then the inevitable happened: “I want pink lights, daddy!” “No, I want blue!” “No pink!” “No blue!”
“Will we settle on purple then, kids?”
And then they both forcibly claim unjust interior light colour distribution, because, of course, each believes that during the previous journey the lights were set to a the colour that the other one chose. If you’ve got similarly aged kids, you know the drill exactly.
So, what was a fantastic family benefit has now become yet another pawn in the game of fairness that all children demand their parents play at every juncture of life. I used to love those lights too...
An enlightening diesel diversion
Spending some time with a MINI Cooper D made us sorry for ever doubting the Cooper's fantastic three-cylinder petrol engine.
Date: 23 December 2015 | Current mileage: 3233 | Claimed economy: 60.1mpg | Actual economy: 40.5mpg
Over the last few weeks I’ve been driving a MINI Cooper D. This was after BMW called back our Cooper five-door for service elsewhere. It proved a rare and useful opportunity to compare the two directly on a day-to-day basis.
First the on-paper stuff. The Cooper D five-door costs £1150 extra and is slower to 62mph, but according to the official figures, returns 18.4mpg more (60.1mpg versus 78.5mpg) and emits just 95g/km CO2 (as opposed to 105g/km), saving you £20 per year in VED.
The usual calculations apply. If you don’t do lots of miles nor fairly regular long distance journeys, it’s unlikely to be worth getting the diesel from a purely financial perspective. However, there is something to be said for the tangible satisfaction of getting more mileage from every tank of fuel.
That’s especially true in the MINI’s case, because while we’re finding it a struggle to hit 350 miles from our petrol Cooper’s 40-litre tank (that’s 8.8 gallons at around 40mpg), the Cooper D will return about another 100 miles. If you’re doing 10,000 miles per year, for example, it’s six fewer trips to the fuel station, assuming you fill up and drain your tank each time – 22 stops rather than 28.
The MINI Cooper's small tank means frequent visits to the local petrol station
A rough calculation, and you might not think that matters much, but the day-to-day reality of a petrol MINI Cooper is a rapidly dissipating tank and the constant threat of another visit to the pumps. It does make a difference.
However, having spent some time with the diesel it’s a price I’m very willing to pay. And I take back any notion of disparagement I directed towards the Cooper’s three-cylinder turbo petrol engine during earlier updates. It’s an absolute corker.
The Cooper D may have a bit more torque (270Nm compared to 220Nm) but it actually peaks at higher revs than the petrol’s torque swell (1750rpm against. 1250rpm) and where the diesel dies out very quickly, the petrol just goes and goes and goes.
The 136PS Cooper turbo engine is far more suited to the MINI’s character than the diesel, singing its way to its redline and all the while getting stronger. By comparison, the Cooper D feels as flat as a nervous X-Factor hopeful. And who’d want to be stuck in a car with one of those?
An (un)sticky situation
The MINI's famed 'go kart' handling tends to fall apart a little in wet weather. As Mark finds out.
Date: 14 January 2016 | Current mileage: 3748 | Claimed economy: 60.1mpg | Actual economy: 41.2mpg
If you know anything about BMW-era MINI, you'll know about the go-kart thing. What began as a pithy marketing slogan, basically born out of a pub cliché, has become synonymous with the MINI to the extent that 'MAXIMUM GO-KART FEEL!' is what the nav screen says when you put the car into Sport mode.
It's strange if you think about it. It's like Audi having a 'MAGIC CARPET RIDE!' setting in an A4, or the Volkswagen Golf Plus being called GOLF TARDIS!
A big part of this feel is the result of the MINI having sticky tyres - if there's one thing MarioKart has taught us over the years, it's that grip is king when it comes to dominating the go-kart scene. That and red shells - sadly one of the few things not on a MINI options list.
When it's dry, the 17-inch Pirelli P Zero rubber that comes as standard is as clingy as a celebrity stalker. The MINI's wonderfully sharp, hefty and predictable steering feel is in large part because the front tyres let you know exactly when they’re about to break traction. And it takes plenty for them to do so.
Until it’s a bit wet or cold, that is. The current climate has rendered the tyres as slippery as ‘70s-era gameshow host. This is not a huge problem day-to-day, but it has changed the character of the car considerably. MAXIMUM GO-KART FEEL! mode has become a no-no of late, because the much sharper throttle response has the front tyres spinning all-too-easily when pulling away. At higher speeds the MINI will break traction alarmingly early.
Usually a car like the MINI is perfect fodder for a set of winter tyres but we haven’t bothered with the MINI. I wish we had. It’s worth saying again (albeit too late for those that don’t already know), but they really are an investment worth, erm, investing in.
Winter tyres use a compound that’s less prone to hardening (which reduces grip) in cold weather and they’re equipped with both a tread pattern and spikes conductive to good traction on ice, snow and water. They are of far greater use in bad weather than a four-wheel drive system, simply because a tyre that has no grip is going nowhere, regardless of how many wheels are being driven.
Lack of snow means the MINI hasn’t really needed winter tyres as such, but the way the weather has affected our go-kart has really made us wish we had them anyway. We want our MAXIMUM GO KART FEEL! back, please. Bring on the Spring.
MINI irritations
When you own a car, it's the mini things that are often the most irritating. As Mark finds out.
Date: 28 January 2016 | Current mileage: 4490 | Claimed economy: 60.1mpg | Actual economy: 42.5mpg
We’re well past the halfway point of our time with the MINI and I’m already thinking about how much I’ll miss it when it’s gone. It’s been that good.
For that reason here’s a list of things that suck about the MINI, that I can refer to for comfort when I’m missing. I did the same thing after my dad buried Flopsy at the bottom of the garden back in ’87. Here are the MINI irritations, then – 'MINItations' for short, that word itself being one of the greatest MINItations of all. That aside, here we go…
The key is a stupid shape
The original MINI, or possibly the second one, or possibly both (I’ve had one of each but I forget – they all look the same, right?) had a chunky disc-shaped key, but there was a place in the dash in which to lodge it. Therefore it made sense. This third-generation MINI has an engine start toggle switch (and very nice it is too), rendering the bulbous profile of the key superfluous and stupid. It’s a big thumb down from Facebook, as you can see.
When you turn the engine off and open the door, the radio stays on
It’s scientific fact that whatever you’re listening to – be it Skrillex or a Mackem trying to pronounce "Coke" during a radio phone-in – immediately becomes massively embarrassing as soon as it’s bleated onto the street. In the majority of new cars, the radio switches off when the door is opened for this very reason.
Fuel gauge looks like it's from the 80s. Not in a good way.
The fuel gauge was an afterthought
Maybe it wasn’t, but when everything else in the MINI cabin seems so obviously ‘designed’, the cheap-looking and asymmetrical fuel gauge tacked to the side of the rev counter sticks out like a retractable aerial on an iPhone.
The rearview mirror is miles away
A quirk of ergonomics means the MINI’s rearview mirror is set about 15ft forward of the driver’s seat. This means that if, like me, you’re sharing your car with someone much shorter, you may want to fashion some sort of arm extension device to assist with your regular mirror adjustments – a hook taped to the end of a broom handle, perhaps. This will prevent much arm ache. Or you could work out some fun way of building up your mirror adjustment arm.
The iDrive
It’s still rubbish. Do better next time, BMW.
So there you have it. Mini MINI irritations all, but irritations nonetheless. It’s this sort of quality real-life road testing that you just don't get with your stqandard first drive review.
Revelations and gratifications
After listing the bad things about our MINI Cooper, here are the surprisingly good things. And some may surprise you.
Date: 11 February 2016 | Current mileage: 5150 | Claimed economy: 60.1mpg | Actual economy: 42.5mpg
Our last MINI update regaled you with our top five irritations, the purpose of which was to cushion the blow of the car’s imminent departure, while giving you some insight into the little things that can't be learned during a relatively short road test.
So this time around we’re giving you the top five things we've come to love about the MINI. Each of the following is a thing we genuinely didn’t expect to find out – so there's no talk of good handing or fun interior lights here.
It has the cleverest boot floor of any car we can think of
Plenty of hatchbacks have a twin boot floor, the idea being you can lift the base and sit it flush with the loading lip, making loading stuff a lot easier. However, usually the removable floor is a cheap bit of MDF that slides into some flimsy plastic bracketing. In the MINI, the floor feels hefty but better yet, it clips up onto the back of the rear seats, out of the way. Simple, effective.
Hidden boot floor is really well thought out
The windscreen pillars are exquisite
They’re very thin and very upright, so they look cool and there’s hardly any blind spot. No other manufacturer has so steadfastly adhered to the methodology of the gangly windscreen-pillar across so many generations. We thought the MINI would have succumbed to Greek coliseum spec pillars by now, but nope.
It sounds sensational
The three-cylinder turbo Cooper engine is one of the most harmoniously satisfying ever committed to a small car. It responds to a thrashing like Max Mosley in a basement, fizzing up to the rev limiter with the sort of free flowing, mellifluous urgency that you simply wouldn’t get from a four-cylinder unit of similar capacity.
It’s actually quite well priced (with restraint)
If you take away the £5620 worth of options on our car (which we’ll explain in more detail at a later date), the MINI Cooper is priced very reasonably. For a shade over £16,000 our five-door Cooper feels like a cut above other small hatchbacks in the quality and prestige stakes – consider, for example, that a mid-level DS3 DSport 1.6 THP costs about £19,000 before you've ticked the boxes for your neon mirror caps and chrome cup holders.
It works as a family car
Didn’t see that coming. Not at all.
Optional vex-tras
Mark runs through an options list that seems to take inspiration from the budget airline school of pricing...
Date: 25 February 2016 | Current mileage: 5750 | Claimed economy: 60.1mpg | Actual economy: 42.5mpg
MINI is notorious for the scale, scope and cost of its options list. And our car is a great/terrible [delete as appropriate] example of how quickly things can get out of hand. There are £5620 worth of options on our MINI Cooper. That's more than a third of the base price of the car.
This is generally a trait in premium manufacturers, who sometimes seem to adopt their pricing strategies from the Ryanair book of airfares. And MINI, of course, posits itself a premium brand.
The options on our MINI take it from being reasonably priced into an area approaching lunacy. £22,180 is laughably expensive for a three-cylinder runabout. It will buy you a SEAT Leon FR 2.0 TDI, for example. Or 19,674 return flights to Dublin - before taxes, insurance, baggage fees, ticket handling charges, the seat premium, non-speedy boarding rates, the oxygen tariff and the Y-fronts surcharge (which you can bypass by going commando).
So just what does that near-£6k outlay get and is it worth it? Well, it includes £1400 worth of sat nav in the form of Media Pack XL, comprising the nav itself, ‘enhanced Bluetooth’ and MINI Connected XL, which basically links the system to a smartphone via an app. An app you’ll probably use once before the novelty wears off and you reopen Facebook.
Our MINI comes with a big gear lever
And what ‘enhanced Bluetooth’ means isn’t clear, unless it means Bluetooth that chooses to hook up to your iPhone only when it fancies it. We’ve lost count of the amount of times we’ve had to stop the car and re-connect a previously linked phone, because the car wouldn’t do it automatically.
The other large chunk of money has gone into the £3200 Chili Pack, although this, we’d suggest, is money well spent. It includes 17-inch alloys, daytime LEDs, dual-zone air con, automatic wipers and lights, more interior lights, part-leather sports seats, velour floor mats, a multi-function steering wheel and the driving modes selector, cleverly integrated into the base of the gear stick.
The last one alone feels worth half the outlay, mainly because Sport mode really alters the character of the MINI for the better, sharpening the link between you and the road and making the MINI actually ape a proper sports car. All it’s really doing is beefing up the steering and sensitizing the throttle, but it makes a big difference.
It’s mid-corner in Sport mode, when it’s dry, in second gear, at 5000rpm, that the MINI sings, and feels every bit twenty grand’s worth of car. The rest of the time, not quite so much.
When MINI met Mini
Our MINI ends up next to an original Mini in a remarkably similar colour, prompting a bit of a rethink about the whole BMW-era...
Date: 10 March 2016 | Current mileage: 5,920 | Claimed economy: 60.1mpg | Actual economy: 43.5mpg
Pointing out how much bigger the upper case MINI is than the lower case one is as common a trait among motoring writers as stealing all the miniature shampoos from a five-star hotel to give as gifts for your partner, or siphoning off all the unused fuel from this week’s Bentley before it goes back. [Just kidding, boss.] Nonetheless…
Look at that picture above. Terrifying.
Now, I guess that as you’re reading this you’re not entirely ambivalent to the MINI vs. Mini debate, such as it is. You know the one: the "it’s a massive German car now, ergo in no way a Mini" brigade versus the "get over yourself...the BMW-era MINI is a modern, high quality interpretation of a classic and the only way the model could possibly exist in the 21st century" set.
I’m setting up two straw men there, really (surely nobody feels that strongly about it anymore, right?), but I’ve always considered myself in the latter camp. I don’t actually know who owns the particular old Mini in the picture – I just found it in a rural car park and enjoyed the serendipity of it – but let’s just say I wouldn’t fancy being in his or her wicker espadrilles if ever they're involved in a minor collision with, say, a Range Rover. I imagine it would look a lot like this.
The massive new MINI Clubman: the Photoshop crop tool's worst nightmare
That said, in checking the MINI’s Euro NCAP rating just now for the purposes of this very paragraph, so that I could say how all the airbags and crumple zones contribute to a big fat five-star car, shock horror, I discover the MINI only has four stars. As a working motoring writer I’m far too busy lining up my collection of tiny conditioner bottles to memorise Euro NCAP ratings.
Four stars isn’t disastrous, clearly. But the Audi A1 has five stars (including significantly higher adult and child occupant scores), as does the Volkswagen Up (ditto).
And that got me thinking. As much as I’m against the thought process that would dismiss any kind of progress that doesn’t adhere strictly to a set of cursory historical perceptions – "Porsche can’t make an SUV, because it’s Porsche," or "Dr. Karl Kennedy from Neighbours can’t be in an awesome band" – I am starting to wonder whether MINI should siphon some of its vast marketing budget off to development instead.
I mean, if a Volkswagen Up can be smaller yet more spacious and safer than a MINI – and, in my opinion, more fun to drive – then maybe MINI, as a brand, really does need to think about where it’s heading? Maybe it does need to get smaller, cleverer. Less MINI and more Mini?
I'm almost ashamed of myself for concluding that. What next? Saying stuff "corners on rails" is what...
Goodbye MINI, it’s been…
Well, that’s it. Time to say goodbye to the MINI that’s served as intriguing family transport for the four of us over the last six months.
Date: 24 March 2016 | Current mileage: 6150 | Claimed economy: 60.1mpg | Actual economy: 42.7mpg
Well, that’s it. Time to say goodbye to the MINI that’s served as intriguing family transport for the four of us over the last six months. I’d love to say it’s been a revelation, but it hasn’t – it’s been every bit the slightly cramped sort of fun I imagined it would be. You can read through the last 11 updates if you want to remind yourself in detail of all things we loved about it, and the not-so-lovable stuff, but the overarching feeling is this: it was excellent, but never truly great.
Our first update recalled my brief, ultimately doomed ownership of a first generation BMW-era MINI, which I bought in 2004. It was doomed because I really couldn’t afford it, but at the time stretched to it because I was sold on the idea that this car was different and said something about me. Although exactly what a pair of silver vinyl stripes and 14-inch alloy wheels actually said is probably best not considered...
Does a MINI say anything about its owner these days? The problem, I think, is that the market has caught up with MINI. A clever combination of personable marketing and marketable personalisation made the first BMW-era one seem somehow magical. It mattered not that the marketing campaigns were dreamt up in German meeting rooms, nor that personalisation boiled down to high priced sticker packs and a few more wheel choices than usual. What mattered was: a MINI was fun, and it felt like yours when, say, a Vauxhall Corsa felt like your neighbour's.
Today personality is easier to find – and a lot cheaper. Fiat, Vauxhall, DS Automobiles (the artist formerly known as Citroen), Volkswagen and the artist still known as Citroen are all at it.
Back of the MINI five-door has some legroom. Just
So stripped of the unique sense of personality that convinced so many (like me) to part with disproportionately high chunks of their salary, what you’re left with is a very expensive small car. The extra two doors make the MINI a better small hatchback – the best, in my opinion – but don't give it back that special something it once had.
Yet they still do give the MINI surprising ability as a family car. It has perfectly adequate rear space and access for independent (ie. older) kids – mine are seven and eight – and it has a boot big enough for a couple of weeks’ worth of junk.
In fact, it's in every way a better car than the overpriced runabout that I so dearly loved a dozen years ago – better cabin quality, better packaging, more space, and all the driver involvement retained while delivering far more friendly ride quality.
Strange, then, that I never really took to it. Maybe I'm just getting old and boring? Hmm...it's not you, MINI, it's me.
