How (not) to spec your Cooper
REPORT 4 1499cc, 3cyl turbo petrol, FWD, 134bhp, 162lb ft 60.1mpg, 107g/km CO2 0–62mph in 7.9secs, 130mph 1085kg £ £15,300/£24,830 Total mileage 5,680 Driver Sam Philip Why it’s here Is the original posh hatch still the best posh hatch?
The car you see above is a £28,400 Mini Cooper. This is a lot of money for a Mini Cooper. Specifcally, it’s 86 per cent above the base price of the new Cooper, which starts at £15,300 on the road.
It isn’t real: £28,400 was the absolute maximum I could extract from a Cooper on Mini’s online confgurator, at the point where adding further options started cancelling others out, and the TG ofce computer became a bit on fre. Highlights of the above car include a natty set of 18-inch ‘Cone Spoke’ alloys for £1,485 (yep, very nearly ten per cent the overall cost of the car), and some delightfully tarty cream leather weighing in at £1,455.
Clearly £28,400 is a ridiculous amount to spend on a Mini Cooper, quite in contrast to our sensibly specced longtermer, which costs a mere, ahem, £24,830. Mini has long been the master of ofering buyers the chance to double the cost of their new car with a bewildering array of bolt-ons. The trick is to know which options are must-ticks, and which are really-must-not-ticks.
Even the basest Coopers arrive with 15-inch alloys and a smattering of chrome on the outside. The cabin comes plumbed with Bluetooth, USB and aux connections, not to mention the requisite array of pedals and wheels necessary for the whole ‘driving’ thing. Our long-termer wears 17-inch ‘Tentacle Spoke’ alloys, which cost a not-unreasonable £450, and are probably about the limit in terms of ride comfort.
But we reckon the smart money here is to spec the £2,250 Chili Pack, which adds 16-inch alloys along with a handful of other useful bits to raise your Cooper above the utilitarian: a leather multifunction wheel, sports seats and dual-zone aircon. Beyond that, exercise restraint, oh box ticker. Mini will happily provide all manner of high-gloss inserts and contrast panels for your Cooper cabin, but frankly you don’t need them. The £375 head-up display is very nice, but, with a speed read-out just a few inches below on the speedo screen, probably unnecessary.
Do you need the £1,175 Media Pack XL, which adds the 8.8-inch central screen with Mini’s smartest nav system? It’s beautifully integrated, probably the smartest small-car set-up on the market, but at the same time we’d be mighty tempted to buy a big tablet smartphone, decent dash mount and a USB cable: hey presto, there’s your future-proofed infotainment system. But that’s possibly a bigger debate for another time…