A tale of two Minis
A duo of small cars with big personalities
THE last trip I made outside the country was at the end of February, when I travelled to the MINI plant in Oxford for the launch of the company’s new electric model. We drove from there to a posh country house hotel in the Cotswolds 80-odd kilometres away.
Most of the trip was on winding country roads, and now I know why — all that braking sends a lot of energy back to the battery, and makes the boast of 235-270km range on a single charge credible.
It’s a very different story on the motorway. When I picked the car up, it had 90% charge but by the time I got home to north Wexford, after driving it on the M50 and M11, it had chewed through the reserves. I had to go to Enniscorthy, 33km away, on Tuesday morning so I stuck the car on the standard home voltage for a couple of hours and had 55% battery available when I set out.
It’s a lively car, full of vim and vigour at 184hp, and I wasn’t sparing those horses. The car accelerates from 0-100km in just 7.3 seconds, but boy does that, and driving at 120kph, affect the battery. By the time I got to my destination after mostly motorway and dual-carriageway driving, I was down to 24%. I had used 31% to get there, which meant I wasn’t going to get home without recharging, which I did for an hour at an ESB ecars point on the road out of town.
What that tells me is that this very much is a city car. My local supermarket is a 5km round trip, and doing that used just 3% of battery capacity, so if short trips or a modest daily commute were your prime requirement in a car, you would be absolutely fine charging it a couple of times a week. For me, though, there is no way I would make the 88km trip to Dublin and back even if the battery was 100% full, so I definitely would have to factor in some time to power it up again.
The battery is a 32.6kW unit, smaller than you’ll find in many other electric cars, but with good reason. After all, the MINI itself is small, and the heavier the battery, the more energy the car uses to tote that extra weight.
The compromise will suit many, but they largely will be those living in urban areas — personally, I’d be looking at something with minimum range of 400km on a single charge.
One good thing about the battery, though, is that its T-shape lowers the centre of gravity and this actually enhances the go-kart feel of the drive which, as ever, is the best characteristic of any MINI. The road holding and suspension are flawless. The accelerator pedal serves two functions — depressing it obviously makes you go faster, but if you remove your foot, it automatically brakes the car, which means you seldom have to use the actual brake pedal at all. Standard cruise control will keep you out of trouble too.
The EV looks different to other MINIs too, thanks largely to the futuristic wheels, which divide opinion. I got used to them but they wouldn’t be my first choice. Nor would I be wild about the taillights that form a Union Jack, and the backlit Union Jack detailing on the fascia.
The entry-level price of the MINI electric is €27,764, net of the SEAI grant and VRT rebate, which is good value. The price can rise as you go through the trim levels — my test car came with full leather interior, panoramic sunroof, Harman/Kardon sound system and other goodies, and that means a premium price of €37,515.
Also this month, I drove the 1.5litre MINI Cooper S Sport convertible. This is the limited edition Sidewalk model (it has some nice design detailing on the exterior), and only 150 will be available for sale in the UK and Ireland, which rather explains the hefty €47,308 price tag.
This one offers a whopping 192hp thanks to TwinPower turbo technology, and comes exclusively with seven-speed Steptronic automatic transmission. Like the MINI Electric, it is a three-door model, and space in the back is not, as you might imagine, generous in a car that measures less than four metres in length. The upside of that, mind you, is that you can find a parking space just about everywhere.
The weather this month didn’t exactly lend itself to much in the way of open driving but since the roof can be dropped or restored electronically in just 18 seconds, I took every chance I got.
There’s very little in the way of fun that beats chuckling a convertible MINI around back country lanes and despite the hefty price tag, I’d have the Sidewalk model in a heartbeat.
For me, though, the MINI Electric would be heart-stopping, every time I looked at the battery monitor and saw it drop by another one per cent.