Mini Cooper C review

Intro

With all the hubbub around the new electric Mini Cooper, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that there is still a normal, petrol-powered one that’s being built in Oxford as before.At a glance, you will struggle to tell it apart from the electric Mini Cooper E and Mini Cooper SE, even though underneath they're completely different cars.While the EVs sit on a brand-new, electric-only platform, the petrol cars are a thorough revamp of the old F56 Mini hatch, using the same UKL architecture that’s shared with the BMW 1 Series.But it does look remarkably similar; it doesn’t even have a visible exhaust. The easiest way to know you’re not looking at the EV is that it retains the black plastic wheel-arch trims. It also keeps the more traditional door handles and clamshell bonnet.

Design

Despite the different technical make-up between the EV and the ICE car, it’s a deliberate strategy. Mini calls it ‘the power of choice’. It’s a Mini first and the powertrain is just another choice.

That’s reflected in the naming too: all hatchbacks are now called Cooper. E or SE is added for the electric versions and C (the 1.5-litre three-cylinder reviewed here) or S (the 2.0-litre four-cylinder) for the petrol variants.

There has been something of a rationalisation of the model range. A more hardcore John Cooper Works is coming later this year, but the entry-level One version has gone, as have manual gearboxes. Instead, the engines always drive through a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic.

The options policy has had a rethink too. There are next to no individual options. Instead you first choose a powertrain, then a ‘style’ and then a ‘level’. The styles are mostly cosmetic: Classic (the basic), Exclusive (which adds some colour in the interior and some gold accents on the outside) and Sport (effectively a JCW styling pack). Then the functional options are grouped in three levels. Level 1 has all the essentials, like matrix LED headlights, keyless entry, heated seats, a head-up display and a wireless phone charger. Level 2 adds a sunroof and privacy glass. Level 3 adds adaptive cruise control, memory seats, Harman Kardon hi-fi, automatic parking and an augmented-reality function for the sat-nav.

The simplification ends at the suspension. Mini hasn’t followed the pack and fitted a cheaper torsion-beam rear suspension. Instead the Cooper retains a multi-link arrangement, like it has had since BMW modernised the Mini in 2001.

Interior

If the exterior design of the Cooper takes out some of the busy ornamentation of previous generations, the interior takes it to the extreme, but thankfully the application of minimalism has been done with more of a sense of design, style and warmth than in Teslas.

Like in the Mini Countryman SUV, the controls and instrumentation have been reduced to a large, round touchscreen and a small panel of buttons and switches underneath. Despite how modern it is, the modern Mini’s interior has never referenced the original Issigonis Mini quite so strongly.

Mini has used a knitted fabric on the dashboard and the doors that provides a bit of plushness and tactility. It’s much more interesting than the screen-on-a-plank approach that Tesla espouses. There are plenty of other fun details, like the strap that forms the steering wheel’s lower spoke or the denim-and-houndstooth upholstery.

Of course, this screen-dominant layout has quite a profound effect on usability. Apart from a handful of shortcut buttons, the screen has absorbed nearly every function, including that of the gauge cluster.

Particularly the lack of a gauge cluster in front of the driver has proven divisive. Some testers found this problematic, others weren’t too bothered and even liked the clear view out. It’s worth remembering that Mini has form with this: the first and second generations of the BMW-era Mini had the speedometer in the centre, like the original Mini of 1959.

The Level 1 option package includes a head-up display, although it's of the cheaper type, where the information is projected onto a little screen.

In any case, things do get quite busy on the centre screen, and it’s absurd that you need to be in Go-Kart mode (Mini’s term for sport mode) to have a tachometer at all, and if you want one with numbers on it, you need to open the speedometer app on the infotainment. ‘Speedometer app’ is not a collection of words that should be required in a car review, but here we are.

The general infotainment interface is typical of current-gen BMWs in that it’s incredibly convoluted, with overloaded and overly deep menu structures that tend to put functions in places you wouldn’t expect to find them. Familiarity helps, but you still find yourself doing far more tapping and swiping than even with the touchscreen-intensive systems from Mercedes-Benz and Renault.

Oddment storage space is reasonable, but if you’re looking for a car with a lot of rear passenger space or boot space, a 21st-century three-door Mini has never been and will never be the car for you. For two people and their luggage or an occasional rear passenger, though, it’s more than adequate. The boot is surprisingly deep and comes with a variable-height floor.

As before, you sit very low for a B-segment hatchback, and there is a lot of adjustment in the steering column. Because this is a three-door car, getting in the front is very easy too, and the B-pillar is very far back.

We will end on a niggle, though, because the seats have lost their adjustable cushion tilt and length and their adjustable lumbar support, which makes them slightly less comfortable than in the old Mini.

Performance

So far, we’ve had extensive seat time only in the three-cylinder Cooper C, but with 154bhp and a 0-62mph time of 7.7sec, it’s all you realistically need. In fact, it’s not far off the Cooper S from 2002.

But there’s one big, fundamental, baffling problem: unless you choose the Sport version (which you might not want to, because it costs an additional £3500 and its cosmetic addenda are an acquired taste and a bit much for some), there's no manual mode for the dual-clutch automatic gearbox. A small, zippy hatchback is the sort of car that we’d always prefer with three pedals and a stick, but times have changed, and Mini has made the annoying but understandable decision to only offer it with an auto; but to then not give us shift paddles is adding insult to injury.

You get D and L (which holds lower gears for longer) modes and that’s your lot. There is a hidden manual mode that’s accessed by holding the gear selector down for half a minute and lets you change gear using the cruise control buttons, but it reverts to D as soon as you touch the brake pedal.

The result is that the engine is often either bogging or redlining, and neither of those is the its comfort zone. The 1.5-litre triple is a typical modern turbo engine that has a fairly meaty mid-range but feels thin and strained at either end of the rev range. The automatic mode works fine when you’re pootling around. Not brilliantly, just fine. But to try to drive somewhat spiritedly with no control over the gearbox is deeply, deeply frustrating.

The good news is that this problem would be exceedingly easy for Mini to fix. The bad news is that we don’t know if it will do so.

Ride and handling

What makes the lack of control over the engine and gearbox all the more frustrating is that the chassis of this new Cooper is hugely entertaining.

It’s very firmly in the sporty corner, with the emphasis on firm. The Cooper doesn't glide in the slightest and navigating a bumpy British B-road is quite a Tiggerish experience. It’s very well damped, though, and tends not to be deflected by bumps. It also takes the harshness out of potholes and other surface imperfections quite nicely. The Peugeot 208, for instance, is softer but not as well controlled so not much more comfortable as a result.

That super-tight suspension does give outstanding body control and lightning-quick steering responses. There’s pronounced torque steer, but that somehow helps the puppyish feeling, and the Cooper grips tenaciously on its Nexen tyres (yes, really, Nexens, but they’re BMW-specific and it’s well known that OE-specific tyres often share little with their off-the-shelf counterparts).

Although the steering is light and doesn’t give much feedback, it is accurate and predictable and it does signal when you’re near the limit of grip. It gives you enough confidence to load up the chassis in a corner. When you do that, the car is very responsive to snapping the throttle shut and will rotate quite eagerly, like a proper hot hatch.

The stability control deserves praise as well. The standard setting is safe but smooth and completely unintrusive if you’re not trying to provoke the car. DSC Sport Plus is a halfway-house mode that’s similarly smooth but does allow a bit of wheelspin and quite a lot of oversteer.

Accessing these modes is harder than it should be, though, because you need to select Go-Kart mode, then go back into the mode selection menu and customise Go-Kart mode, and only then do you get a drop-down menu for the ‘driving dynamics’.

Assisted driving notes

Our test car wasn't equipped with adaptive cruise control, so we’ve not been able to test it yet, but if it is anything like the system on current BMWs, it should be one of the best around.

The other driver assistance features generally work well, and even the lane-keeping assistance and speed limit recognition are better than most. Those still give too many false positives, but they’re relatively easy to turn off.

MPG and running costs

The Cooper C costs from £23,150, which isn’t cheap for a Renault Clio-sized hatchback. On the other hand, it’s pretty well equipped as standard and is much more powerful than most cars of this size. It also has the allure and design of the Mini brand and does feel more ‘premium’ than most cars of this size.

We would stick with the Classic style and add the Level 1 pack and an optional paint colour. That brings the price to £25,700. Spec a Clio, Toyota Yaris or Skoda Fabia to the same level and you won’t be much better off.

The four-cylinder Cooper S is quite a pricy upgrade, at over £5000 more.

You will get much better economy out of both the hybrid rivals and the less powerful petrol manual alternatives, though. Official fuel consumption stands at 47.1mpg and we averaged 43.4mpg over the course of a week.

Verdict

The fourth generation of the 21st-century Mini is in equal parts delightful and frustrating.

Not only does it lack the option of a manual gearbox but also, unless you choose the questionably-styled Sport cosmetics package, you have no control over the automatic gearbox. That’s quite annoying in the Countryman SUV but simply baffling in a small hatchback that seems otherwise laser-focused on appealing to the keen driver.

Handling-wise, it's easily the most entertaining small hatchback on sale, with the possible exception of the wild Toyota GR Yaris, which is much more expensive and hard to get hold of. Mind you, even if you are the sort of person who appreciates entertaining handling, the firm ride could become wearing.

The back-to-basics exterior design really does what it set out to do: get rid of a lot of the trinketry, clean up the proportions but keep it very recognisably a Mini.

The same applies to the interior, which delights with some really original touches, although it certainly suffers from BMW’s current infotainment strategy that prioritises gimmicks over usability.

While the multimedia might improve with over-the-air software updates, it's unlikely to change fundamentally. The lack of a manual mode for the gearbox would be very easy for Mini to solve, and we very much hope it will do so, because there's a real dearth of affordable cars that are fun to drive at the moment.