CRASH ZONE
Rough and raucous drop top offers MINI-mal fun
I’M a pretty easy-going sort of person, really.
I like most music – switching from Dying Fetus to Beethoven, The Upsetters to German techno and pretty much everything in between.
Food? Put it in front of me and I’ll eat it. Unless it’s a by-product of goat. I draw the line there.
People? I tend to see the best in people first and somebody has to be pretty foul for me to take a dislike to them, which is thankfully rare.
I’m the same with cars most of the time.
They’re all pretty inoffensive. Unless it’s got more than 600bhp, most cars look, sound and feel the same with only subtle differences.
But, like people, sometimes a car turns up that just bugs you. Like when you meet someone for the first time and take an instant but inexplicable dislike to them.
It was like this with the MINI John Cooper Works Convertible a few weeks back.
On first impression, I drew a blank. Just a car.
Then I spotted its crass grey-black Union Jack fabric roof. It made me grind my back teeth and narrow my eyes. And we hadn’t even really met yet. Its face grated on me, too.
That boy with no shoulders who presents Rude Tube has the same effect on me. I’ve never met him but he still induces the same fist-clenching reflex every time he appears on my TV.
So I pop open the door and sit inside. The dashboard looks like a dog’s breakfast, as if 17 different designers all played their part without talking to one another.
This upset me a bit. A bit like a friend letting you down.
The original Mini had such a fresh, crisp, distinctive and simple dash layout with its cycloptic central speedo. And what have they done? They’ve ruined it, that’s what. They’ve hurled everything at the new dash and it’s a design disaster.
So, to cheer myself up a bit, I head out for a needless drive. But that hood, that miniscule back window… reversing out of my parking space feels like being one of those Shire horses pulling a brewer’s dray. Blind in every direction apart from deadahead. The dash-mounted LCD screen for the reversing camera is practically invisible due to the glaring sun. This isn’t going well. A few miles in I’m beginning to think I’ve got out of the wrong side of bed. The shaking windscreen, rock-hard suspension and raucous exhaust note just irritate me further.
Selecting sports mode, I floor the accelerator. It’s quick but, like an old 1960s Fiat, the noise it makes is not directly proportional to the velocity. It is louder than it is fast. The pops and bangs on the over-run are properly cringeworthy.
My teeth start to grind so I head for home to park it up, planning to try again after a good night’s sleep.
The next day is sunny. I set off – roofdown – to see a man about a dog, selecting a cross-country route. Rear visibility with the roof down is equally bad, as the roof doesn’t fully retract. It sits there like a big Porsche whale tail spoiler. And the stupid exhaust note is even more intrusive.
I also look like a total bellend. Fiftyyear-old bloke with a bald patch in a roof down convertible. It’s not a strong look. As un-clever as it is un-big.
The brakes are fantastic, though. Strong, tactile and progressive.
So I head home to see how much this motoring experience would cost. This fact-finding really cemented our doomed relationship.
Base price is £26,630! Oof, as they say in the Beano. Add a Chili Pack (£2,400 – this also includes the annoyingly titled “MINI Excitement Pack”) a Media Pack (£1,200) and stuff like an auto box (£1,380), Union Jack fabric roof (£490) heated seats, head-up display and run-flat tyres and this small car costs an eye-watering £34,860. That’s not easy-going.