Preferring The Soft Top
by David Finlay (08 Dec 04)

I had parked the MINI Cooper S Convertible and had not walked more than ten yards from it when my phone rang. At the other end of the line was a colleague who was sitting in a MINI Cooper S Convertible, and what he wanted to do was discuss the MINI Cooper S Convertible. I had no idea these things could dominate your life to quite this extent.

We didn't need to talk about the basics; the cheeky looks, the almost complete lack of room in the rear, the boot which could be used as a not particularly spacious hamster cage, the high level of standard equipment compared with other MINIs. The conversation centred on handling.

Handling is a bit of an issue with this car, because it's pretty quick. The Cooper S with the proper roof already packs quite a punch, producing 163bhp, but the Convertible - weighed down by various strengthening components to prevent it folding in half - has had its supercharged engine tweaked to bring the output up to 170bhp in an effort to match the straight-line performance of the standard S.

In both cases the engine is mated to a six-speed gearbox, as opposed to the five-speed unit found in the naturally aspirated versions. This is a marketing ploy pure and simple, because the S doesn't need six gears. It pulls like a turbo diesel from 2000rpm (the supercharger making a noise which is pleasantly evocative of the transmission whine in an original Mini) and is still doing so at 7000, well beyond the point where any turbo diesel would be gasping for you to change up.

The extra shifts are not much of a problem, however, because although the gearchange is a little notchy, the clutch action is superb. You would need to be awfully clumsy to move from one gear to another in a less than elegant manner.

In the case of the properly-roofed Cooper S, the rapid acceleration is matched by super-sharp handling. Over-sharp, if anything. I would love to drive one on a race circuit, but for road use it seems a little too frenetic, a shade eager to catch you out if, for example, the road goes over a crest and turns at the same time.

In this respect I reckon the Convertible is the better car. Of course, it doesn't handle quite as precisely - that was never going to happen from the moment the MINI people decided to chop off the roof. But it still handles astonishingly well. Even though I can never be fully comfortable driving any MINI (the steering wheel isn't sufficiently adjustable for me to able to put it where I want it), I had a great time with this one.

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