Written by Luke Wilkinson Updated: 17 September 2024

Our Deputy Editor, Luke Wilkinson, will be looking after a brand-new MINI Cooper S for the next three months. As a classic Mini owner, he’s never much cared for the BMW remakes but, to his surprise, this latest model is right up his street. Scroll down to find out why this generation of MINI has changed his mind about the brand.

Update one: welcome

I’ve never been a fan of the modern MINI, mostly because I don’t like how far it’s deviated from the original car’s concept. The Mini was designed to be a small, cheap, classless runabout for the masses – but BMW’s recreations have been none of those things.

Over its previous three generations, the MINI has shaken off its people’s car roots, moved upmarket and piled on the pounds to the point that its dimensions no longer match the adjective written across its badge. It’s more of fashion accessory than a sensible city car these days.

As a classic Mini owner, this personality U-turn has been getting up my nose for years – even since before I became a car journalist. And, to add insult to injury, once I started my career, the first press car I ever drove was a third-generation MINI Cooper 5-door hatch.

Unsurprisingly, I didn’t like it. I couldn’t stand its square-peg-round-hole infotainment system; I hated its contrived faux-retro, white-faced rev-counter and I still haven’t figured out why the five-door MINI even exists. It hardly offers any extra space in the back over the standard car. Oh yeah, and the Mk3’s seat bolsters nipped my kidneys and gave me chronic backache on the motorway.

So, you can only imagine how displeased I was when I found out I’d be running the latest MINI Cooper S as my new long-termer – especially because this ‘new’ model is basically a heavily revised version of the previous car. It’s built on the same platform as the Mk3, and it’s powered by the same 2.0-litre petrol engine (albeit with slightly more poke).

I was ready to give the new Mk4 MINI Cooper S a savage thrashing – until I drove it. Then the penny dropped. I’ve only spent a couple of weeks with the car so far, but it’s already challenging the top spot in my list of the best cars I’ve driven all year. Scroll down to find out why.

That was unexpected. What makes it so special?

To me, the previous three generations of the MINI Hatch have felt like washed-up rock stars. They’ve been steadily gaining weight while trying (and failing) to recapture their glory days with constant nods to the past. I also don’t feel they were different enough from their rivals to justify their premium price tags.

But this? This moves the game on. It’s a truly inspired change in convention that ushers in some fantastic new technology, some brilliant innovations in cabin design and a driving experience that I think is probably the most involving in its segment.

I’ll start with the technology. MINI has taken a huge step away from its competitors and designed a brand-new, circular infotainment system which, as is the fashion these days, controls everything on the car. It’s excellent – and I love that it looks towards the future rather than clinging to a retro pastiche.

The new screen is every bit as sharp as a flagship smartphone – and its design feels remarkably familiar with a similarly organised menu layout and kindred swipe commands. MINI has utilised every inch of space on the screen, too. The climate controls are at five and seven o’clock, your speed is always at 12 o’clock and, when you’re not on the gauge display, your engine revs and fuel are at 10 and two.

I’d recommend paying extra for MINI’s head-up display, though. If you don’t, there isn’t a screen ahead of the driver – and it’s a little jarring to constantly look at the centre of the dashboard to check your speed. I’m sure you’d get used to it in time, but the head-up display makes the interior feel a little more approachable. Thankfully, my car has this tech.

I love the fabric trim on the dashboard and door cards, too. It isn’t like the fabric you used to get in poverty-spec cars from the 1980s – it’s genuinely hard-wearing and it feels quite expensive (even though it’s made from recycled materials). It also has a practical purpose because it doesn’t reflect sunlight like a shiny vinyl or plastic dash.

What about the driving experience?

God it’s good. Its suspension is properly sorted, offering enough control to allow me to carve roundabouts and back-roads like I’m on a hot lap at Goodwood. MINI picked the Cooper’s tyres carefully, too – they’re only just grippy enough for the power the S has, which means they’re constantly chirping and whistling when you’re driving quickly. That’s fun.

MINI hasn’t tried to isolate the driver, either. The new Cooper’s steering is brilliant. It transmits the texture of the road all the way up to your palms and it’s super-fast, which means you hardly ever need more than a quarter turn.

It’s a bit of a handful, though. The Cooper S has 204hp, which is quite a lot to put through the front wheels of a small(-ish), light(-ish) hatchback. If left unchecked, that formula produces an effect called torque-steer, in which the pulling power of the engine dictates the direction of the car by tugging on whichever front wheel has the most grip.

Normally, manufacturers work hard to tune this out of their most powerful front-wheel drive cars. The new Honda Civic Type R, for example, doesn’t torque-steer at all thanks to its clever front differential. But the MINI Cooper S torque steers a lot. An awful lot.

Put too much power down on your way out of a junction and the car will try to pull you into oncoming traffic. Be a little too liberal with your right foot on a left-hand corner and it’ll head towards the verge. Hammer the throttle flat on a straight road and the steering wheel will squirm around in your hands like it’s trying to escape.

If you like driving, this is very entertaining. The Cooper S’s lively nature constantly keeps you on your toes – and it makes it feel more like a highly strung classic Mini than any of its predecessors. The only way MINI could have made it better would be to offer the car with a manual gearbox. If that was an option, I’d seriously consider buying one.

Is there anything you don’t like so far?

My MINI Cooper S doesn’t come with paddle shifters. They’re part of a £3,500 option package that adds a slightly sportier body kit and some racing stripes. This seems like a huge oversight, considering this is supposed to be an exciting hot hatchback. I reckon they’d make the driving experience a little more fun and help to compensate for the lack of a manual gearbox.

The rest of my pain points are trifling. The central cupholders aren’t quite big enough for my water bottle and there isn’t a massive amount of storage in the cabin. But I seldom have enough stuff about my person to fill the cubbies in any other car, so I don’t really care.

The boot’s a bit small, too. There’s only 210 litres of space, which is just enough for my backpack, carry-on case and gym bag, That means, if I want to travel anywhere with my skateboard in tow, I need to sling it on the back seat. If I try and cram it into the boot, it pushes the parcel shelf up and prevents me from seeing out of the rear window. But I dealt with similar space constraints in my old Mini, so I’m used to making this sacrifice, too. And it’s not like passengers can fit behind my driving position anyway.

In fact, I very much doubt I’ll find anything about the new MINI Cooper S that’ll irritate me over the next three months – but I’ll let you know if I do. Stay tuned.

Current mileage	3,012
Real-world average fuel economy	37.8mpg
Official combined fuel economy (WLTP figures)	45.6mpg
Car joined Parkers fleet	July 2024

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Update two: behind the lens

This month, I’ve been filming a video review on my MINI Cooper S for the Parkers YouTube channel. In the process, I’ve learned a bit more about my car’s practicality features – including its hidden storage bin that’s perfectly sized for my skateboard.

It’s been an odd month. I’ve been tearing about in my Cooper S like a blue-arsed fly, flitting up to Cumbria to see my family, racing around the south-east on launch events and laying the groundwork for the Parkers 2025 New Car Awards. I’ve also been doing a spot of video reviewing.

This last task on my to-do list was the one I was most apprehensive about, because I’d never flown solo on a video review before. I’d always been supported by my colleague, Mr. James Dennison, Bauer’s very own Head of Automotive Video. Thankfully, the MINI gave me plenty to talk about, so I wasn’t left gawping down the barrel of the lens like an ill-prepared A-level language student butchering their final speaking assessment.

Scroll down for a glimpse at what went on behind the scenes on the shoot day, along with a brief overview of some of my findings about my Cooper S’s practicality.

Come on then. What did you learn on the shoot?

I found out I’m not very good at delivering pieces to camera. Tej Bhola (one of Bauer’s Automotive Videographers) made me look like a hero in the final edit, but those interior driving shots took a good two days of shooting and countless outtakes to get right. Hopefully I’ll get better with some practice.

I also learned the new MINI’s quite photogenic. The pictures you see in this report are just happy snaps I took using my phone, but even my clumsy attempt at ‘photography’ couldn’t find an angle that made the car look ugly. Maybe that has something to do with the Cooper’s spec. That British Racing Green paint is deep enough to swim in.

You need a lot of equipment to shoot a car review, too, all of which you don’t see in the finished product. Tej had a gimble, a trolley, a box full of lenses, microphones, a massive mount to attach a camera to the windscreen for the interior driving shots and even a harness to strap himself into the rear of a car while we were filming tracking. You can see some of the kit in the image below.

Finally, I learned that filming a car review is a lot of fun. Because Tej and I get on so well, it didn’t really feel like work. Yeah, we made sure to capture all the important facts about the car on camera – but the parts between the takes, when we were coming up with jokes to stick in the edit, had us falling over each other in fits of laughter.

What did it teach you about the Cooper’s practicality?

Well, mostly that it isn’t very practical. For a cutaway gag, Tej thought it would be hilarious if I squeezed myself into the rear of the Cooper S behind my own driving position. Which was all well and good until the MINI’s comfort access seats decided they wanted to eat me.

They automatically slide forwards when you pull the release lever on the backrest. Then, once you’ve slotted yourself into the bench and pulled the seat back into place, they return to where they were. But, because I’m tall and sit quite far back, the front seat slowly slid backwards until it had squished my knees into my femurs.

So, that’s a couple of points off for the Cooper’s passenger carrying capability – but I’ll have to add a couple for its clever boot space. I recently discovered my Cooper has a hidden storage bin under its boot floor that just so happens to be perfectly sized to swallow my skateboard. That’s great, because it means it isn’t rolling around the boot scratching the trims and tearing my luggage to shreds.

Anything else worth mentioning?

I’ve finally figured out how to switch off the car’s obnoxious synthesised exhaust sound. The switch is buried in a sub-menu on the driver profile screen – and now it’s off, I can hear myself think on the motorway. More importantly, I now can enjoy listening to Megadeth without the incessant sound of a phony yet farty exhaust ruining the stereo levels.

I don’t understand why MINI bothered to give the S a soundaktor. I know new cars are now legally obliged to have quiet exhausts can produce, but I’d much rather listen to the sound of a muted real engine than a noisy fake one. The Cooper S doesn’t even sound that bad, either. And with the simulated engine sound off, I can better hear the turbo waste gate whooshing when I lift off the throttle.

It’s still smooth sailing with the Cooper S. And, as much as I’d rather not admit it, the shoot day only accelerated how quickly this little car’s getting under my skin. If you’re interested, you can watch the finished video below. I think my face in the driving shots says everything you need to know about the car.

MINI Cooper S Exclusive
Latest mileage	4,560
Real-world average fuel economy	37.8mpg
Official combined fuel economy (WLTP figures)	45.6mpg
Car joined Parkers fleet	July 2024

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Update three: teething problems

After three months with my Cooper S, I’m finally starting to find things about it that annoy me. They’re by no means severe enough to make me start hating the car, but they have made the ownership experience a little less seamless. I know MINI can’t please everyone, but two of these faults are fundamental hardware issues that its rivals do better.

Fault number one. MINI’s wireless smartphone charger is weaker than a malnourished baby bird. It barely has enough waft to maintain my phone’s state of charge, let alone increase it. And that’s a problem after a long day of travelling.

I spend a lot of time galavanting around Europe for my job and, on the return leg of my recent trip to Marseille to drive the new Ford Capri, I encountered a problem. My phone was dead because I’d been using it all day to record interviews with Ford’s executives – but I desperately needed Waze to show me the most efficient route home.

To make matters worse, the charging port on my phone doesn’t work if there’s an ‘r’ in the month. So, I was relying on the Cooper’s wireless charger to bring my phone back to life and grant me the power to chart a safe course home through the many road closures and accidents between Gatwick and Lincolnshire. Which it couldn’t. I drove home on blind luck, with some rough guidance from MINI’s built-in sat-nav system.

My MINI’s screen isn’t great at recognising my phone, either. On two occasions now, Android Auto has just failed to connect – even after following all the steps in Google and MINI’s convoluted troubleshooting guides. I’ve had to reset the car twice now to regain wireless Android Auto. Maybe MINI can mend this with an over-the-air update?

Lastly, the seating position is just too high for my build. I’m struggling to find a position that allows me to sit up straight, as the height of the roof means I need to crane my neck to see all the road through the windscreen. It doesn’t sound like a huge problem, but when I’m on the motorway, trying to see as far down the road as possible, I’m finding it a little annoying to keep adjusting where I’m sitting on the squab.

Again, though, these are inconsequential faults. None of them are irritating enough to make me want to hand the keys back to BMW – and they pale into insignificance as soon as I tip the MINI into a tight corner. As I’ll now explain.

Have you found anything else you like?

Oh yes. I’ve been exploring the limits of the Cooper’s chassis – and I’ve found that it handles a lot more like its ancestors than I expected.

Have you ever watched classic Minis racing around Goodwood? The drivers can back the cars into corners by simply lifting off the throttle, letting the front wheels bite and allowing the rear end to slide. And this one does exactly the same thing.

I discovered this by accident when leaving the top end of the A1 on a slightly damp and misty evening in October. I went hot into the corner, chucked it at the apex – and I had an epiphany. The car pivoted around my hips, and all that was needed to correct it was a squeeze of the throttle and a dab of opposite lock. It was wonderful.

So, I’ve decided. I need to find an excuse to get this car on a track. A little more space and a bit more speed (along with a dinky racing roundel or its doors and bonnet), and I reckon the new Cooper S will do a great impression of its grandfather.

MINI Cooper S Exclusive
Latest mileage	8,321
Real-world average fuel economy	37.8mpg
Official combined fuel economy (WLTP figures)	45.6mpg
Car joined Parkers fleet	July 2024