Mini Cooper S - long-term review

Five or six years ago I was in Germany for a day locked in a secret room at Audi’s Ingolstadt factory. A very serious man with an Audi lapel badge proceeded to confiscate my phone, then show me the Audi Q4 and Q6 e-tron, the e-tron GT, and the RS3. These are all cars you’re now familiar with, but back in 2019 these were secret, new and exciting. Apart from the Q4. And the Q6.

Anyway, I was interested in a gimmick concealed within the RS3’s headlights. There was a ‘pixel’ section which had been set with alternate LEDs on and off to look like a chequered flag. Mmm, racy. The serious man explains to me I was witnessing a new frontier in automotive personalisation.

Allow me to paraphrase on his behalf. “It’s not quite ready yet – legally lights have to look the same all the time,” he explained. “But soon you will be able to go into the touchscreen and choose your own light design. Your headlights will be totally unique!” His excitement briefly overcame his seriousness.

Being a mature, professional journalist, I asked what would happen if – hypothetically – someone rendered the pixels to display an illuminated piece of genitalia. Or your mates mucked about with the screen while you were busy outside filling with petrol, and spelled ‘TW*T’ across the DRLs.

The serious man conceded that yes, that would technically be possible. I was never sure if I single handedly derailed Audi’s programmable headlights, but when the RS3 went on sale in 2021, you couldn’t change which bits lit up. And to the best of my knowledge, you still can’t in 2024.

But in the new Mini… you can! Wondered why the tail lights are made of lots of little segments? Turns out there’s a sub-subity-sub-menu in the touchscreen where you can choose from three different lighting signatures. I know. What a time to be alive. We got tailor’s version mini tail-lamps before we got GTA 6.

There’s ‘Classic’ – round front DRLs and Union Jack rears. There’s ‘Favoured’ – no, me neither. And there’s ‘John Cooper Works’– horizontal front DRLs and a sort of T-shape at the back.

You can’t make your own designs, which I guess gets round the problem I exposed to Audi all those years ago. And I suppose the modern Mini was the car that really re-invented personalisation of small cars, with its different roof decals, stripes, mirror motifs and so on. So, this is a logical modern extension of that.

Speaking of ‘tech for tech’s sake’, a phone notification popped up the other day. My Mini is spying on me and reporting back to base. I’ll explain more soon…