The new MINI is destined to take its place in the pantheon of the greats James Siddall In the months and years to come I may well God willing get to indulge in all manner of motoring clichs, like booming from Los Angeles to New York in a porno-red Corvette with Springsteen’s Born To Run on the sound system. Or watching dawn break over the Kenyan savannah from the front of a travel-stained Land Rover. That sort of thing. Either way, very little is going to rival howling through the Italian countryside on an azure Spring afternoon. Particularly when the countryside Umbria in this case, which is, erm, to the right of Tuscany with its medieval towns, one-donkey villages and serpentine roads looks more Italian than any movie image conceivable. And particularly when the car in question is the new MINI, which, yes, is now spelt with capitals throughout. But glorious as our surroundings were the car could frankly have been launched in a Gauteng industrial park in mid-winter and it would have hardly detracted from the effect. When new owners BMW decided to recreate Sir Alec Issigonis’s 1959 masterpiece, there was plenty of room for tears because, as everyone knows, it’s not always a good idea to tamper with masterpieces. As it is, BMW succeeded beyond measure. And while the car does indeed have a wheel in each corner, as per Sir Al’s original design, and is simply loaded with beautifully wrought styling cues, from the staring headlights to glass-covered B- and C-pillars, it’s also a more technologically advanced piece of work. Gone, gone, gone is the minimalism of old to be replaced by levels of engineering and equipment until very recently only found on upper-echelon sedans.
The hot Cooper version we sampled, for instance, has power windows and mirrors, air-conditioning, power-steering, air bags and deeply funky instrumentation, with a huge central speedometer dominating things. There’s also a vast list of options, from fatter alloys to a sunroof to Xenon headlights to satellite navigation to automatic CVT transmission. Where the new MINI does echo its predecessor is in actual driving. Or, to be more specific, in the insane levels of fun it provides. Only the fun doesn’t terminate at a shrieking 140kph or so, with the 1,6-litre, 85kW Cooper being good for about 200kph and the zero-to-100kph run in about 9,2 seconds. (The standard MINI One makes 66kW, while an even hotter 115kW Cooper S is scheduled for production.) Handling, ride and the rest, however, are not even vaguely comparable to the original. Thank God. Next to the old machine, the MINI is a McLaren F1 to a Model-T and thanks to all manner of techno-trickery, which we simply don’t have the space to go into, it corners with the alacrity of a lslot-car lllyet will lllllcomfortably cruise four-up just like a grown-up sedan. Providing, of course, that the rear passengers don’t mind the rather cosy seating arrangements. Stopping is another thing it’s brilliant at, with disc brakes mated to advanced ABS and even the option of BMW-style traction control or dynamic stability control. It’s a good thing too on narrow Umbrian roads, where every five metres you have to brake for an asthmatic baby Fiat or a village that looks like a facsimile of the one you’ve just driven through. Happily then, this perky little package will be landing in South Africa in April next year. And, yes, we’ll definitely be getting the Cooper version and, who knows, ultimately the almost infinite variety of derivatives sure to be spawned among them, I hope, a stripped-down, no-frills version. But it won’t exactly be the cost-cutter that the original was, with the Cooper likely to carry a tag of R130000 upwards. Which is sure to elicit two very different responses. One from a rather crusty element who’ll mutter something like: “One hundred and thirty thousand ront for a Mini? Good Lord, man, I bought mine for two empty jam jars and a rusty nail back in …”
Another from the car’s somewhat younger target market, who will be doing backflips at the notion of such a glorious, iconic alternative to today’s bland wagons.