Mini Cooper S - long-term review

This isn’t a new Mini. Not really. All the bits you see, touch and taste are fresh, and you’re presuming I’ve gone mad. But if you move away from the slick Mini marketing, you'll discover this is in fact an almost 11-year old car underneath.

And you’d do exactly the same thing if you were in charge of the Mini board. Developing a car platform is furiously expensive, except if you’re doing one that needs to support an EV as well as a petrol version. Then it’s bloody eye-watering. So Mini has dodged it.

Peel away the doe-eyed panels on the electric version of the ‘new Mini’ and you’ll discover a joint-venture Chinese-German collab between BMW and Great Wall Motor. The electric drivetrain is related to the one powering the Ora 03, formerly known as the Funky Cat.

This isn’t electric. TG’s new Mini has a turbocharged 2.0-litre engine under the bonnet. Exactly the same as you found in the previous-gen Mini Cooper S from late 2013. And so is the gearbox, and the suspension, and the brakes, and the chassis. What Mini has done is thoroughly re-skin the old car, and fit it with a new interior.

Put the new electric Mini alongside the petrol one and you’ll spot they’re far from identical. The electric one ditches classic Mini touches like plastic wheelarches, a clamshell bonnet, and retro fridge door handles. It’s dumpier somehow.

So the 201bhp petrol Cooper S has come to stay. We’re interested in the notion of a ‘new-old’ car – is the cosmetic surgery enough to keep a relatively elderly car competitive?

It might well be, since all the rivals have fled. When the bones of this Cooper S were shiny and new you could buy a supermini-sized 200bhp hot hatch from (deep breath) Ford, Renault, Peugeot, DS, Skoda, VW, Audi and Vauxhall. They’ve all left the building, save for the perpetually disappointing Polo GTI. Hyundai’s i20N has come, conquered, and gone. All that brand equity in the likes of Cupra, VXR, Renaultsport… down the drain. It’s a staggering blight.

While you aren’t charged a 2013 price, £26,700 for a Cooper S in 2024 doesn’t seem too bad on face value. You even get a heated steering wheel as standard. But it won’t look like a Cooper S. Or even come with paddleshifters for the standard automatic gearbox (manuals are also extinct here).

So you’ll need Sport trim. For a mighty £3,500, you get the body kit, the stripes and the bulldog bravado a hot Mini deserves, plus the paddles that really ought to be standard. You also bag uprated brakes, sportier seats, and adaptive suspension. Though why you’d want anything stiffer than standard is a question for the ages. Or Mini’s marketing sadists.

This car was treated (by Mini, not us) to a further £4,500 pack adding every conceivable toy and trinket: keyless go, two sunroofs, electric seats, a selfie camera for some reason, and a head-up display which, again, really ought to come in the base car given the there’s no longer a speedo in front of the driver.

Plenty of kit to sift through then. And some nagging doubts – is this the last small petrol hot hatch to ever grace the TG Garage? And how does that minimalist interior fare when it meets hectic everyday life head-on? Turns out there’s a lot to explore even when a car isn’t as fresh as it first appears. And I’ve already had to take a screwdriver to it…