From the moment of my arrival I had the blonde's full attention. This sort of thing does not happen nearly as often as I might wish, but I knew enough to sense that on this occasion I should be the chased rather than the chaser. Sure enough, within thirty seconds she walked up and made the first move."Do you mind if I have a look round the car?" she said, causing every scrap of suavity to fall from me immediately. "It's really beautiful.""Er, yeah, no problem," I said. "Actually it's not really my car." Not the best chat-up line she'd ever heard, I'm sure, but hey, I was confused.In far less than the time I spent putting a tenner's worth of unleaded into the tank, she walked round the red machine with the white roof, smiled, said thanks, and wandered off, no doubt with dreams of becoming a MINI owner one day.And that's really all you need to know about the Rover-designed, BMW-owned pastiche of Britain's best-loved car. It attracts attention. People relate to it. If it's yours, they talk to you without embarrassment. If this is what you want, read no further - just buy one.Still here? Okay, then. Beyond a vague physical resemblance (about the same as the new Beetle bears to the original), this car has of course almost nothing to do with the former Mini. It is at the same time very much more and very much less than its predecessor, and will be bought for reasons which would not have occurred to Alex Issigonis back in the late 1950s.The good stuff first. The MINI is in many ways a brilliant piece of engineering. The smoothness of its steering and transmission are almost unparalleled among cars of similar size. You waft from corner to corner almost by thinking the car into a change of direction, rather than hauling at the wheel, and creamy-smooth gearchanges are a matter of course rather than a cause for quiet pride.Handling isn't as pin-sharp as was the case with "real" Minis, but in Cooper form the new version is a delight to drive on fun roads. Before it was released on sale it obviously spent many hours being driven hard on test tracks - tracks with very smooth surfaces, too, I'd say. Firm rear suspension means that the back of the car follows the front through corners (which is why you don't have to turn the wheel very far), though the downside is that ride quality is none too clever when there are bumps of any size to be dealt with.Performance is pretty good too. A former Grand Prix driver once tested a Cooper and reckoned that its engine was unutterably feeble. He thought the best thing to do would be to wait until the supercharged Cooper S came along, which will be some time next year. If you're driving flat out along very long straights this is no doubt a fair point, but in the real world I had no problem with the well-spread power of the naturally-aspirated Cooper.The interior designers were obviously allowed to let rip on the MINI project, and apart from the fact that I couldn't see the top of the rev-counter through the rim of the steering wheel I thought the car was very attractive indoors. The large speedometer in the centre of the fascia is an obvious throwback to early Minis, and it works pretty well.Front seat occupants have a huge amount of room, but as far as clever packaging is concerned, that's the end of the story. When I'm sitting in the driver's seat there is no possibility of anyone sitting behind me, so feeble is the space in the back. If a back seat passenger got in first and made themselves comfortable, I would not then be able to drive the car because I would be jammed up against the steering wheel.I'm no longer surprised that the current world record for the number of people aboard a MINI is only one more (18 versus 17) than the equivalent figure for the old Mini.Perhaps the rear passenger space is so small to compensate for a large boot? Nope. There's hardly any luggage room at all, barely any more (at a guess - I've not compared the figures) than in the original car. A miracle of packaging in 1959 terms has been replaced by what amounts to a two-seater sports car with a roof in 2001.It's not as if the insistence on lots of room in the front has made the MINI particularly comfortable to drive. The seats have quite pronounced central spines, which may have been intended to give extra back support but which in practice made them exceptionally awkward to sit in. I was feeling twinges within ten minutes of any journey - a long run, say two hours without a break, would be out of the question.The MINI is fun, but I wouldn't consider it as an everyday car. Still, it scores higher than any car I've driven this year (hell, any year) in the blondes-in-filling-stations test. Engine 1598cc, 4 cylinders Power 115bhp Fuel/CO2 42.2mpg / 163g/km Acceleration 0-62mph: 9.2 seconds Top speed 125mph Price £11,600 Details correct at publication date
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