Mini Cooper S Review #TBT - Fifth Gear

here it is the moment we've been waiting for six years since bmw revealed the new mini we can reveal the brand spanking new new mini oh hi i think you've sent us the wrong car they hadn't this definitely was the all-new mini every panel is different but unless you've spotted that the side repeaters are now filled in with chrome see you'd think this was the old one there'll be a mini one costing 11 600 pounds a cooper costing 13 and this cooper s at 16 grand but bmw have gone to great lengths to make sure that this mini looks like the previous one and understandably so people loved the styling now if you knew your old mini you'll have realized that the headlights and the front wing were all part of one big clamshell arrangement which was actually very expensive for bmw to build and also really quite costly if you had to replace something in a front-end prang the lights themselves now peer out through these holes and the bonnet itself is actually more conventional so again repair costs are likely to be cheaper and as for that bonnet scoop well it's now a fake they're for purely cosmetic purposes because it's no longer actually needed because an s wouldn't be an s without a go faster hole in fact this bonnet had quite a lot to do with dictating the entire shape of the rest of the car because it's had to be raised to meet new pedestrian impact safety ratings they've actually had to raise this entire horizontal all the way down the car now that meant they actually had to chop the windows down because they didn't want the mini to be any taller that also means you're left with a lot of metal between the top of the door and the bottom of the car so to keep the proportions the same they've had to change the shape of the wheel arch every time you look at the new mini you just think it's slightly bigger the old 1.6 liter supercharged engine is gone it's been replaced by another 1.6 but this time with a turbo and it's the same engine we'll also be seeing in the new peugeot 207 gti at 175 brake horsepower it's got ever so slightly more power it means you've got a quicker naught to 60 time of 7.1 seconds and a marginally faster top speed of 140 miles an hour which to be honest is pretty much as fast as i'd want to go in a mini but more than that you get a sweeter to rev nicer responding engine that old 1.6 with a supercharger might have had plenty of grumbly character but it didn't feel as sophisticated this car might have a slight bit of turbo lag but you also get an overboost feature so when you really get on the throttle you get more torque for a short period sounds like this cool huh what's particularly fun is how well matched the engine is to the six-speed gearbox it lets you keep the car fizzing along really nicely really feels like everything's working together they're a proper team this engine and gearbox rather than just colleagues the old gearbox actually felt a bit notchy it wasn't bad but this one is again that little half step more sophisticated inside you'll notice that everything's had a bit of a tidy up but keeping all of those mini features that we loved from before what is different is the quality these stalks here feel much much more solid more together and there's still the toggle switches that we loved but they just feel like they've got a bit more tactility to them we've got heat controls here in the shape of the mini emblem this huge speedo right in the middle of the dash and this we don't have a key anymore just a slot and a push button start brilliant huh of course one of the mini's real strengths was the go-kart feeling you got through the seat of your pants so now that it's a bit bigger has it lost all of that twisty road eagerness and the answer is a definite no the mini still feels fabulous it's actually grown up quite a lot it feels really solid in a fast sweeper and still quite frisky in a short tight hairpin it doesn't move around you it moves with you perfect you know i've been thinking about this and even though it looks virtually identical to the old car this new version the mini is completely different it rides better it handles better it's built better it's more efficient if i was in the market for a small car the mini would still get my money oh my goodness i can't turn the traction

Channel: Fifth Gear

Views: 392,679

Keywords: Mini Cooper S, Mini Cooper S Review, Tom Fifth Gear, MINI (Automobile Make), ThrowbackThursday, Fifth Gear, car, review, fast, crash, fifth, gear, Tiff Needell, Jason Plato, Vicki Butler-Henderson, car review

Id: 7xLNRWaRFfI

Length: 5min 39sec (339 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 16 2015