Mini Cooper S - long-term review

Every time I come to the end of a long-termer’s run, there’s two things I like to do with the final report. First, reflect on the actual car itself. What went wrong, what broke, what it cost, what it’s worth now. Because the cars of the Top Gear Garage are here to show what they’re like to live with. 

Lots of good news here then: the Mini has been pretty painless. Let’s rattle off the report card: no warning lights, no faults, no touchscreen meltdowns. The only tech foible has been an occasional falling-out with my phone. Everything’s working fine, Apple CarPlay is connected, BlueTooth tuned in. I momentarily get out the car to fill up with petrol or grab a car park ticket, and when I land back inside, it’s like we’ve never met. 

“Hello, welcome to Mini. Care to connect your phone?”

I just did. You were playing a podcast like five seconds ago. 

“Sorry, I can’t find your phone. Are you sure it’s nearby?”

It’s literally in your wireless charging dock, dummy. 

“Hmm, there seems to be a problem. Try again later.”

But I’m half an hour from home and I’d like sat-nav and entertainment please...

“Hello, welcome to Mini!”

And so on. But like I said, that’s happened a handful of times in seven months, and way less than in the Volkswagen Golf Mk8 I lived with in 2022. 

No build quality foibles either. The Cooper S is stupidly stiff, but the trim doesn’t buzz, the seats don’t squeak, the carpets aren’t bobbling and the steering wheel isn’t remotely buffed to a high sheen. After 8,000 miles together, it’s wearing fine. Compare that to some of the wear-and-tear evident in the likes of Rowan’s £130k Audi RS7 and Andy’s BMW i5 Touring and the Mini comes off strongly, its reputation for solidly hewn interiors intact. 

The only unexpected cost was £130 for a new Pirelli, to replace one sacrified on the craggy altar of Britain’s pothole-riddled roads. Luckily the 18-inch rims stood up to the clonk without damage. 

Running costs were better than expected. Probably not top of the hot hatch priority list, but as we talked about last month, this isn’t really a hot hatch: it’s a miniature BMW saloon dressed as a cartoon rally car. Thanks to a very tall seventh gear and strong torque, the Mini routinely racked up 45mpg averages across a 400-mile tank (and over 50mpg on long motorway jaunts). 400 miles on a £55 fill-up – that’s less than 14p per mile. I imagine the Cooper EV would work out cheaper still with strategic charging, but what price do you put on convenience and versatility? 

Being a new and not especially common car, depreciation is tricky to pin down but I did find a 9,700-mile Cooper S with a similar (huge) level of optional extras for sale at £28,500. TG’s car is yet to break 9,000 miles but with an as tested price the wrong side of £37,000 (a Cooper S Sport starts at £31,170) it goes to show once again that a huge options spend when new rarely translates into strong residuals when you’re not in the realms of limited-run super sports cars. Minis are invariably among the slowest depreciating superminis. Another reason to take it easy on the goodies. 

Or – and this is what I’d do – ditch the S and buy a regular £23,000 Cooper. It looks cleaner and less try-hard if you don’t bother with Sport trim bodykits. The tri-cyl engine sounds sweeter, is lighter and the car thanks you for it with massively more chuckable handling. That’s (still) the sweet spot. We ran the Cooper S because we feared it might be our last chance to live with a petrol go-fast Mini, but in truth the Ss and JCWs haven’t been hot hatches for a while. They’re range toppers. Rich in spec but low on cheekiness. 

It leaves me wondering ‘where next’? for Mini. The range is back up to its natural maximum fleet of models: the three-and five door Cooper, the soft-top Convertible, plus the Aceman and Countryman crossovers. No sign of a new Clubman wagon but you’d imagine SUVs have killed that off. 

Thing is, I haven’t met anyone who thinks Mini is getting the styling right at the moment. The mixture of Sixties-chic kitsch with BMW’s penchant for odd angles isn’t a happy combo. 

Inside, the frisbee screen-dependant interior is a real love/hate opinion splitter. 

And where can the brand really aim for next? Get more radical with the design? Dangerous tactic. Make even bigger cars? That’ll tread on BMW’s toes. More extreme performance cars? Doesn’t seem likely. I reckon Mini could do with a radical concept car right about now. This Cooper is an effective reskinning of an ageing car – no-one really caught on this is a super-heavy facelift. I guess that tells us something about the car world: maybe for most people, things plateaued a while ago, and now the same themes are getting repeated.