Mini Aceman review

Mini made a bold choice with its new interior design language, and you’d better like it because it has replicated exactly the same look across all of its cars. Well, you get a slightly different centre console in the Aceman, but that’s pretty much it.

You sit fairly high up and get that now-familiar OLED central touchscreen which always displays your speed, mileage, remaining range and other driving info up at the top. You can choose to enlarge that to fill the screen if you so desire, or you can use the central section for maps, media or connections like Apple CarPlay/Android Auto. Be warned, both of those sit awkwardly in the circular screen – a rectangular peg in a round hole, so to speak.

Then down at the bottom are your climate controls and a group of shortcuts to take you through to different menus.

But is it good?

Listen, some key features are certainly buried too deep into the menus, and it will take a lot of getting used to. But we have to credit Mini for its uplifting approach – it's funky, but functional. Funktional?

It’s responsive and the graphics are impressive. Plus, there’s a neat ‘tool belt’ that you can access with a single swipe and can customise to include your most-used funktions (it'll catch on).

Beneath the screen are physical buttons and toggles to switch the car on, to select drive and to cycle through the different experience modes (which also change the graphics on screen and the sound that’s pumped through the speakers – Balance mode is very zen), while underneath that are a few physical buttons to bring up the driver assist menu, to call up the parking cameras and to demist your windows in a hurry.

Mini’s cool new recycled knitted textile covers the dash and door cards, and although this steering wheel looks cool with its fabric strap as a third spoke, it really is far too chunky for a small car like this. A head-up display is standard on the SE, but you’ll have to pay extra for it on the entry-level model. We’re yet to drive a new-gen Mini without one and get the feeling it'll be annoying.

Is there much space in the back?

It’s hardly a Rolls-Royce Phantom (or even a VW Golf), but legroom isn’t horrendous in the rear of the Aceman, and with the five-doors it’s much easier to access the back seats than it would be in the Cooper Electric. Headroom will be fairly tight for those anywhere near 6ft, but otherwise it’s not too bad thanks to a slightly raised section of roofliner.

What about luggage space?

Well, if you’re comparing it to a Cooper then the Aceman is reasonably practical. It gets 300 litres of boot space with all the seats in place and a maximum of 1,005 litres when the rear bench is folded. The Cooper falls well shy on both counts.