MINI Cooper Review 2025

One key annoyance for BMW was that despite its sales successes with three generations of MINI Hatch almost everyone who wanted one called it the Cooper, despite it being more akin to a trim level across a whole suite of different-sized models. Now heavily revised inside and out, BMW’s admitted defeat with its range of 3- and 5-door small hatchbacks — find out how good the updated car is with our comprehensive MINI Cooper review.

With the previous MINI Hatch, Cooper was the middle-ranking performance and trim combination, sandwiched between the humbler One and faster Cooper S. Leaving the rapid John Cooper Works version aside, this new-era MINI Cooper now has just two levels of petrol-powered urgency — C with 156PS and S packing 204PS.

Where matters get slightly confusing is that while the outgoing MINI Hatch was available in electric form, there isn’t an EV version of the updated MINI Cooper. No, really, there isn’t — instead, the latest MINI Cooper Electric is built in China using an all-new platform with bodywork that isn’t remotely interchangeable with the petrol versions.

To extract more production life from the combustion-engined versions, BMW’s facelifted them to mimic the smoother, minimalist styling of the electric car — a cost-effective solution given the impending 2030 ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars, ensuring it can remain profitable while demand lasts.

Given the scale of the overhaul the latest Cooper looks fresh and charming compared with its most direct rivals, of which there are few these days. The Audi A1 is the most obvious alternative yet its starting to show its age and in terms of performance and fun doesn’t offer anything that can truly go toe-to-toe with the MINI but it is cheaper.

Less expensive still are a couple of other compact hatches that are very closely related to the A1 — the Skoda Fabia and Volkswagen Polo. Both are worth, competent, more spacious and better value than the MINI but are seriously lacking in the allure department. Closer to the Cooper in price, outgunning it for flexible space but a comparative dullard to drive is the Honda Jazz. In truth, if you’re looking at one, the other’s unlikely to be on your radar.

So, if you want a compact car — inside and out — that majors on fun, it’s the MINI Cooper, one of its showroom stablemates or the evergreen Mazda MX-5. It’s not an obvious alternative but the similarities, including prices, are rather close.

Step inside the updated MINI Cooper and its immediately clear how thorough the refresh has been with the same knitted fabric appliques to the dashboard and door panels, as well as the dominant — and fully circular — touchscreen as its newer electric sibling. The lack of rear seat space, particularly in the 3-door, remains…

More positively, the petrol-engined MINI Cooper remains an absolute hoot to drive with extraordinary levels of grip to exploit the overused ‘go-kart handling’ its makers are — rightly — proud of.

What is likely to disappoint those of a more enthusiastic persuasion is the total lack of a manual gearbox — every MINI Cooper has a seven-speed dual clutch automatic with only the Sport trim featuring steering wheel-mounted paddles to switch ratios yourself.

Read on to find out whether the MINI Cooper’s talents run deep or if its appeal’s largely down to the fact that there’s nothing else really like it.

With the MINI Cooper those corporate brags about the car’s ‘iconic go-kart handling’ continue —initial impressions would suggest rightly so. This is a clearly expensive suspension set-up because although the ride may be firm it’s always supple, only really falling foul of the worst surfaces at urban speeds. 

A relatively short wheelbase dictates that the MINI Cooper’s penchant for hip-hop never entirely dissipates but the ride smooths out incrementally as speeds grow, leaving you free to concentrate on exploiting bucketfuls of agility. Almost…

All our early misgivings about the absence of a manual gear change landed like an anvil on Wile E. Coyote’s foot within the first few miles of driving the MINI Cooper. Its automatic transmission won’t be hurried and offers remarkably little engine braking when you lift off the throttle, so you find yourself relying entirely on the brakes and tyre grip to slow for a corner, until the throttle and gearbox combo finally respond to your demand for more power in a lower gear.

At motorway speeds the MINI Cooper feels remarkably composed. Velocity seems to iron out many of the road surface lumps and bumps that set the occupants jostling in their seats at a slower pace and the car settles into a pleasingly mature cruise. We averaged just over 43mpg, which doesn’t seem that great for a small car but certainly reflects how urgently the Cooper encourages you to drive it hard.

The grip levels in the dry are extraordinary. Pick your line through a corner no matter how sharp and the car will stick. It drives like Minis of old — it feels light on its toes, nimble and agile. Through corners it stays as flat as a Lancashire vowel no matter how enthusiastically you bung it at the bend. A fantastic chassis.

Take way the gear lever and there’s no question that you also take away a deal of  the fun. If only you could be in charge of selecting which ratio you want and when, we reckon this car would be an absolute hoot to drive.

Presumably most MINI buyers want the style and don’t care so much about the entertainment potential and there’s no doubt we’re being prepared for the age of electric MINIs dominating through the introduction of auto-only transmission here. 

You’ll need a minimum of £30,200 to get steering wheel-mounted flappy paddles courtesy of the Cooper S Sport — the closest you can now get to access all areas when it comes to entertainment.

The MINI Cooper C uses a three-cylinder 1.5-litre petrol engine good for 156PS and 230Nm of torque. It steps smartly off the line and via a nicely oleaginous seven-speed dual-clutch automatic gearbox. The 3-door’s quoted 0-62mph time of 7.7 seconds feels just about sprightly enough for a car with Cooper badging, while the 5-door’s a shade behind at 8.0 seconds.

Boasting as-near-as-dammit 500cc per cylinder, the C’s engine doesn’t thrum in the manner of small three-pots, and is pretty smooth and quiet at idle. You’ll want to turn off the auto stop function, though, because the engine is both slow and B-movie shuddery in coming back to life; not much help with hasty junction exits.

The sportier Cooper S boasts a four-cylinder 2.0-litre petrol unit producing 204PS and 300Nm of torque, sufficient for the 3-door to squirt from 0-62mph in only 6.6 seconds, the 5-door requiring an additional 0.2 seconds for the same exercise.

The rather upright windscreen and A pillars make wind noise very noticeable at motorways speeds, and there’s also plenty of tyre roar, especially with big wheels fitted.

The 2024 MINI Cooper hasn’t been tested by Euro NCAP yet but it’s one of the strongest small cars in terms of safety. The structure of the car hasn’t changed dramatically to its predecessor and though the old car only scored four stars, it was marked down for its lack of safety kit.

This has now been remedied with the MINI Cooper now incorporating a generous range of features including autonomous emergency braking, lane-keep assist, traffic sign recognition and a useful reversing camera. Features such as adaptive cruise control, self-parking and blind spot monitoring are all provided from the various option packs available.

There’s stacks of space up front in the MINI Cooper — those snug, comfortable, low-slung driving position’s available to even the tallest folk thanks to the seat’s huge sliding range. The sports steering wheel that accompanies higher trim grades is, however, a lumpen rimmed, ergonomic disaster.

Storage isn’t so great up front. There are a couple of cupholders and a lidded bin where the manual gear lever used to live but the door pockets are not only diminutive — they’re also largely inaccessible because of the armrests directly above them. Don’t waste your time trying to squeeze 1-litre bottles into them.

There’s only a small glove box despite the dashboard top being so deep it runs the risk of a local authority granting planning permission to build on it. That expanse of unused interior space, together with the near-vertical windscreen and thick windscreen pillars, make forward visibility more compromised than it need be. 

Full marks for the upright wireless phone charging pad’s elasticated clip, which ensures you’ll always find your mobile where you left it. 

The rear seats of the 3-door car we drove are tight for both head- and legroom and definitely only accommodate two smallish passengers. Pulling a lever on the shoulder area of the front seats allows them to fold and slide forwards but even then access is quite a squeeze for all but circus contortionists. Mercifully, the front seats remember where you left them when slid back into place, but have a care for the knees of adults freshly crammed in behind.

Space in the back of the 5-door should be more accommodating given it’s a heavy facelift of the previous MINI Hatch. That means two adults should be fine once they’ve negotiated the narrow rear door apertures but three abreast remains deeply uncomfortable.

Thanks to the angle of the seatbacks the rear seats themselves are actually pretty comfortable. There are storage pockets in the front seatbacks and three cupholders for two to share.

Boot space with the rear seats in place is just 210 litres which is fine for a weekly shop but hopeless for almost any dog, unless you’re punishing it. The rear seats fold in a 60:40 split, readily toppling almost horizontally with the tug of toggle on their tops. Unfortunately there’s quite a step in the resultant loadspace floor when they’re folded and the volume only swells to 725 litres.

Courtesy of its extra length there’s more space available for carrying things other than passengers in the MINI Cooper 5-door, although the extra capacity could hardly be described as generous. Seats up and the boot will carry 275 litres — a 60-litre increase over the 3-door — while folding them over liberates 925 litres, representing a 200-litre rise.

The MINI Cooper’s interior is quite a modernistic, stripped-down affair but it looks seriously stylish and perceived quality is off the scale. 

In a segment littered with dark, drab interiors, the knitted fabric dashtop, door panels and console box top are an environment enlivening masterstroke. As are the after-dark variety of coloured ambient light patterns projected across the dash top according to your choice of infotainment screen design.

The smart, vegan-friendly faux leather seat upholstery adds a further lift to proceedings and the look and feel of the switchgear — even down to the air vent toggles — is first class. There are unfortunately more cheap-feeling plastics than in its predecessor but they are largely well-disguised and the eye easily distracted elsewhere anyway.

The wok-sized, 24cm-diameter OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) touchscreen is finally fully circular, rather than a rectangular display wedged into a circle-shaped moulding, featuring MINI’s latest infotainment software. The graphics are very crisp and clear and there are a range of styles and colours with you can personalise your screen via the MINI Experiences toggle switch.

This turns out to be a scroll through seven choices of screen and ambient lighting designs:

• Go-Kart sports a black and white dial with red needles and ambient lighting — it introduces itself with a ‘woo-hoo’;
• Core is the default setting with a pleasant blue background;
• Eco is green, of course;
• Vivid is bright red with matching ambient lighting;
• Timeless has a magnolia background and old-fashioned typeface — exactly like the dials on the Rover 75 once BMW decided the original design wasn’t sufficiently 1950s British;
• Balance is similar to Core with a darker blue tone and more subdued ambient lighting;
• Personal wherein you can use one of your own photos as the screen background — selfie heaven.

Largely the system works well but the menus could be more logically laid out and there are some ridiculously small icons for stuff such as seat and steering wheel heating — they’re almost impossible to hit on the move.

Below the infotainment screen one of the very few remaining buttons on the dashboard takes you directly to the vehicle settings menu, which means two less prods of the screen. Either way it’s then a doddle to disconnect the lane-keeping assist, the speed limit alarm and the annoyingly slow and jerky auto stop/start function.

Connecting smartphones is no problem — the usual confirmatory digit-dance between car and mobile screens working with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.

Finally we come to MINI ID. We’re not yet sure exactly what this can do for you since the video tutorial we found featured a woman who smiled a great deal while connecting up via her mobile yet actually told us nothing. We do know that it’ll save your preferred temperature settings, radio station and whether the head-up display is on or off. Until it doesn’t — then it defaults to what as as well be someone else’s settings instead. Annoying.

A 3-door MINI Cooper C can be yours for as little as £23,150 in Classic trim while for the 5-door it’s £24,050. The 3-door Cooper S Classic is priced from £27,550 jumping to £28,450 for the extra pair of rear doors.

One thing that certainly hasn’t changed is the capacity of the new MINI Cooper’s price to skyrocket as you climb through the trim levels and plunder the option packs. Both 3- and 5-door Coopers C and S are available in a choice of three trim levels — Classic, Exclusive and Sport. In addition there are three option packs — Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3, via which you may further pile on the toys.

As a for instance, the 3-door MINI Cooper C Exclusive we drove costs £24,500 plus another £4000 for the Level 2 options pack and a further £550 for its black paint — suddenly that’s over £29,000.

You can buy an awful lot of Audi A1 for that seeing as it’s priced £23,500, while its mechanically similar cousins, the Volkswagen Polo and Skoda Fabia can be had from £21,210 and £19,880, respectively. If you value space in a small car, the flexible Honda Jazz weighs in at £26,885.

Okay, none of them are MINIs or feel as special inside but if it’s entertainment you’re after and interior space isn’t too important for you, there’s always the Mazda MX-5 — yours for £28,015.

The 3-door MINI Cooper C’s WLTP Combined average fuel consumption is listed at 45.6-47.9mpg, while CO2 emissions stand at 133-140g/km depending on the trim level. Opt for the MINI Cooper C 5-door and those ranges become 45.6-47.1mpg and 136-140g/km of CO2.

You aren’t significantly penalised for opting for the sportier MINI Cooper S 3-door with the firm claiming 44.1-45.6mpg and 140-144g/km CO2 emissions. The 5-door’s extra length and weight sees those slightly worsen to 44.1-44.8mpg and 142-145g/km of CO2.

If fuel economy is a top priority, the Volkswagen Group’s engines are more efficient — such as in the VW Polo. Aided by their hybrid systems cars like the Honda Jazz and Toyota Yaris can now average over 60mpg.

While MINI’s warranty doesn’t last as long as many rival companies it does potentially suit drivers doing lots of miles as there’s no mileage cap on it up to three years. Given that the MINI is a premium small car, servicing will likely be slightly more than more mainstream rivals. The company offers a service inclusive pack, which covers the car’s servicing up to its fourth birthday (up to 62,000 miles) for £1,044. 

As the new MINI Cooper has only just launched, there are certain unknowns surrounding its reliability. Given its underpinnings and engines are evolutions of those in the previous MINI Hatch, it should prove fairly dependable as that car has performed well in recent reliability surveys.

We’ve also been impressed by the new Cooper’s touchscreen and its software which seems seamless and runs without any issues. That might sound a given but many manufacturers — most prominently the Volkswagen Group — often have hiccups with their software when its cars first launch. 

Both 3- and 5-door MINI Cooper C and S models are available in a choice of three trim levels — Classic, Exclusive and Sport, which have the same equipment content with either engine choice. While they differ in price they are more cosmetic than anything else.

Standard equipment for the MINI Cooper Classic includes LED front and rear lights, automatic wipers, 16-inch 4-Square-spoke alloy wheels, black and blue knitted fabric on the dashboard and door panels, Vescin faux leather and cloth upholstery, a 24cm OLED central touchscreen with integral navigation, Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, dual-zone climate control, a heated steering wheel, lane-keeping assist, blind-spot detection, automatic emergency braking and cruise control.

Upgrade to a MINI Cooper Exclusive and additional kit includes 17-inch U-spoke alloy wheels, a Vibrant Silver grille surround, two-colour fabric on the dash and doors, perforated Vescin faux leather upholstery and front John Cooper Works sports seats.

Plump for a MINI Cooper Sport and there’s a more purposeful aura with a beefed-up body kit accented in gloss black, 17-inch John Cooper Works Sprint-spoke alloy wheels, black finishes for the cord textile and Vescin faux leather sports seats and dashboard fabric, and a perforated leather finish for the steering wheel together with gear-change paddles.

After that, there are bundles of extra equipment that you can add handily called Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3.

Level 1 is a £2000 option on MINI Cooper C models but standard on the Cooper S and includes adaptive LED headlights, automatic high beam, an auto-dimming rear-view mirror, keyless entry, electrically folding door mirrors, heated front seats, a head-up display and a wireless phone charger.

Pay an £4000 on Cooper C versions — or £2000 with a Cooper S — for Level 2 to add the Level 1 pack plus a panoramic glass sunroof, darkened rear privacy glass and a Harman-Kardon sound system.

Level 3 is only available on the Cooper C Sport (for £6500) and the Cooper S in Exclusive or Sport guise (£4500) — adding to the Level 2 pack’s roster with electrical adjustment and memory function for the front seats, lumbar adjustment and massage function for the driver’s seat, adaptive cruise control, augmented reality for the integral navigation system, automatic parking and an interior camera for remotely checking what’s going on inside your MINI or taking selfies.