How to you make a Mini more practical?
No, this isn’t the setup for a dad joke – it’s a legitimate question.
The snug two-door technically has four seats, but the rear pews are small and hard to access. But opt for the soft-top Mini and the practicality of the little runabout improves.
I drove a Mini Cooper S cabrio on a recent family trip here and it acquitted itself in this role surprisingly well.
Driving a Mini hardtop feels as if I am peering out of a bunker. The low roofline and narrow glasshouse reduces visibility to a slit. Fold the roof down and it ceases to be an issue. The sunshine and fresh air of Melbourne pour in as the motorized roof tucks itself into the cute bustle above the trunk.
Cute is an unavoidable word when discussing the Mini. Its big headlights and curvaceous metal proclaim fun. An aggressive chin spoiler and black racing stripes over cream paint up the visual aggression a couple of notches.
Inside, the retro flair compromises functionality. The large circular central display screen could be swapped for a more conventional shape that would free up space and not compromise screen size. Regular switches are used for some operations, and toggles for others, and the decision behind which to use for what is haphazard. And there’s black plastic. Lots of black plastic.
A curious bit of customization you can do to the interior is change the colour of a loop of LED lighting that surrounds that central display screen. It’s cool, but also something you’d set once and never think about again.
The roof came down whenever it was time to put the six-year-old and 18-month-old in the rear seats. Lifting them over the gunwale of the Mini was easier than squeezing behind the front seats. The full-size child seat for the youngster ate up a lot of room, and the small booster seat for my older child left her with no legroom with the driver’s seat in a comfortable position.
Because we had more than the comically tiny trunk can handle, again down came the roof. Suitcases, even a child’s mattress, were just tossed in.
The struggle was the Catch-22 of not having room to pack an umbrella stroller at the same time as having four passengers (including the two kids) on board. I swear the fold-down trunk lid laughed at me every time I opened it and contemplated putting anything more than some soft bags inside.
The soft-top doesn’t substantially affect the rigidity of the car. There were no odd shakes or rattles driving over Melbourne’s tram tracks. The turbo-boosted engine pushed out 189 horsepower and gave the little car solid acceleration. The burble from the twin exhaust and the whine of the turbo spooling up were a joyous combination. It felt like BMW-lite.
Don’t get carried away with the Mini’s performance chops, though. The rear starts to get light when cornering vigorously and, even in sport mode with the auto transmission in “manual,” it’ll still upshift when it decides to, regardless of your intentions. I’ll happily sign a waiver or go deep into a settings menu to disable this behaviour and accept the resultant risks to the longevity of the drivetrain.
The most entertaining part of driving the Mini convertible was the look on the kid’s faces as the wind tossed their hair around. It was a charming mix of exhilaration and uncertainty.
Which is how I felt about the car itself. It was fun to drive and is well put together, but you need to buy into Mini’s version of style to be truly satisfied.