Mini Me

MANILA, Philippines - The first time I saw the MINI Coupé, the first thing that came to mind was that someone had dropped something very heavy on the MINI Cooper and then tried to cover up the damage with a reversed baseball cap. Actually, that is not entirely true, but it’s the most printable version of what went through my head.

Honestly, it is not so much that I didn’t like it, but more importantly, I just failed to see the point. The Cooper is one of the most successful designs of all time, accounting for the majority of MINI’s two million units sold since it’s rebirth back in 2001, and to tamper with that is like convincing the Brits they could improve Big Ben by going digital.

I could see the point if there were significant gains in even one key area, but if you consider that it shares almost the exact same dimensions as the Cooper line up, albeit an inch shorter in height with two less seats, in exchange for a measly 2 km/h gain on top speed and a tenth of a second advantage on the sprint to a hundred, you, too, might think twice about clicking the like button, if you know what I mean.

But then again, the fact that it doesn’t need a point to make a point is exactly the point of all this. Because if there’s one mainstream company that can afford to build a car that doesn’t need to be everything to everyone, it has got to be MINI. Simply because it can. Which is quite ironic when you see the rest of the world’s car makers scramble to come up with that one model that tries to please everyone from the little old ladies at Walmart to the teens that just came out of a Fast and Furious movie, and along comes a product like this that aims to fill a void in the market as wide as the gap between its spark plugs.

But if you think about it, that in itself is actually quite impressive.

I’ve always said that if Apple were to build a car it would be the MINI, and if the late great Steve Jobs could convince us that we needed another expensive gadget to bridge the gap between our smart phones and his laptops, then there’s definitely a success story waiting to be written for this new Coupé. It may not offer a whole lot more than the Cooper, but hey, if Apple came up with something in between the iPhone and iPad and called it the iFad, you just know that people would line up to buy it.

And that’s the whole appeal of MINI. It doesn’t need to make sense. It just is. It can afford to be different; as different as you and I. And another ironic twist is that the fact that it is not for everybody is precisely why almost everyone wants one – in one shape or another. This explains the Countryman, the Clubman and now the Coupé. Same attitude, in different shapes and sizes. And as soon as you drive one, you’ll be wondering why the hell you settled for “normal” for so long.

Take this launch for example. While every other car maker would have booked out a flashy seaside resort in Spain or Portugal and closed off an international race track, MINI held it exactly 4.3 kilometers south-east of nowhere in an active military base just outside of Munich. And just to crank up the attitude a notch, our rooms were in a bunker, which we were driven to in a bright yellow school bus with loud music that served alcohol. Ok, rooms is a fairly strong word – these were literally caravans about half the size of the bathroom of my last hotel room, shoved up against the curved steel walls of a bunker that you just prayed didn’t have a Union Jack painted on the top. And the only way in and out of here was on a foldable MINI bicycle. Seriously.

You want to talk about normal? I’m afraid no one would understand you here. And yet the last thing I wanted to do was leave. I figured they may be on to something. Besides, at least there was Wi-Fi. Welcome to the global launch of the MINI Coupé – the very first International MINI launch with a Philippine media representative. It’s nice to meet you, too.

If there was any doubt in anyone’s mind where MINI were trying to position this new Coupé of theirs, it was pretty much washed away once the MINI big boss (I love saying that) hopped out of the display car to deliver the press briefing wearing a full race suit and helmet. But just in case any of us missed it, the next half hour or so was spent celebrating the history of motor sports legend, John Cooper, including his 3-time win of the Montecarlo rally, his driver and constructor’s F1 championships, his love of (and success with) MINI, as well as the current World Rally Championship and the recent Nurburgring 24-hour endurance race. There was of course a side dish of design tidbits and engineering trivia, but the message was clear.

“Race car it is,” mumbled the journalist beside me, in an unfamiliar European accent, as he scribbled something down in his notebook and reached for another handful of complimentary candies.

But the Coupé is so much more than that. Honestly, if they were trying to personify the car, the boss may as well have jumped out of the car in racing overalls, dinner jacket, roller blades and a reversed baseball cap because that would get a little closer to summing up the new Coupé. Not because it is trying to be everything to everyone, but simply because the designers never had a rule book to work with – making it part sports car, part urban cruiser, part rebel, part party animal, and the best part, partly uninterested in what everyone thinks about all of that.

So how do you criticize something that doesn’t seem to care what you think? You don’t. You just let it do what it does, and if you don’t like it, the problem is with you.

With that in mind, I buckled up and started piling on the miles around Munich. As suspected, it drives no different to any Cooper I’ve driven before it – which in case you aren’t sure, is actually a compliment. I was hoping for a bit of an edge, but I’ll settle for similar because there’s not a whole lot of room for improvement anyway. A little more power would be nice, not because this Coupé is a slouch, but once again to sharpen the contrast between siblings.

First up was the 2-liter diesel variant they call SD. It may not have the lungs of the John Cooper Works (JCW) versions, but damn does this thing pack a punch. This is the same engine that motivates the vastly larger Countryman, and I can tell you that it is a lot more willing once it slips into something more comfortable. The horsepower rating may not change but the parental advisory rating should.

BMW have committed heavily to these engines, announcing a 500-million pound investment for their engine plant in Hams Hall, as well as their plants in Swindon and Oxford, and you can definitely feel why. The SD sails through its six speed transmission (no BMW 8 speeds here) rapidly and smoothly and there’s never a dull moment on every increment of the right pedal.

On public roads, the SD makes a stronger case for itself, giving you more useable power than the JCW; but find yourself trying to cover a lot of ground in as little time as possible, like we did during our high speed track test in the military facility, and the JCW is definitely the weapon of choice. The surge is certainly not devastating, but very addicting. And come across some high speed changes of direction, and all of a sudden, that extra inch that they were able to shave off the top starts to feel like a foot or two. Weight transfer seems more managed, turn-ins are sharper, recovery of the balance seems to happen quicker. And if you think I’m exaggerating, just think about the lengths a racing team would go to to reduce the center of gravity in their cars, and you will know what I’m talking about here.

Or let me put it this way: if you ever wanted to know the value of an inch, just ask a woman. In the right area, it could be a deal breaker. And just in case you’re wondering, I’m talking about an inch of fat around the love handles or under the chin. Why? What were you thinking?

The windscreen has been raked another 13 percent and it slices through the air a bit cleaner, giving it the extra 2km/h on the top end. Not much, sure, but better than a poke in the eye.

The interiors are strikingly similar to the rest of the MINI line up, and once again, it would have been nice to see a bit more differentiation here, but let’s not dwell. There’s the traditional center mounted speedometer, chrome flick switches and other MINI trimmings, as well as an engine Start/Stop button, but the Coupé steps things up a bit with a hollowed recess on the roof above each occupants head – cleverly addressing the compromise of interior headroom, while still maintaining that slightly lower center of gravity – plus the latest app-based entertainment system that integrates with your iPhone to give you Google, Facebook and Twitter access, plus the choice of over 20,000 online radio stations.

Despite the fact that it fits two less people, it feels no tighter up front for the driver and passenger than a regular Cooper – except for the much smaller rear quarter window that restricts your view and can make merging into freeways a bit challenging, especially when the active rear spoiler pops up. Behind the two front seats is 280 liters of storage space with a grab thru area to the trunk, which would be a significantly better feature, unless of course you fold the two rear seats of a Cooper down.

There’s little to no doubt that the Coupé is more of an individual MINI. It may not be significantly better than any Cooper before it, but its adds another expression to an already very emotional line up. And after is all is said and done, it is much easier to get hooked on a feeling than to try and rationalize one.