In its element in the Peak District
Its handling prowess comes to the fore on a trip to the Peaks
WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT
To discover whether a drop-top Mini could be the perfect car for summer
So southern am I that
I was once part of a football crowd singing a rude song about the north to the fans of, er, Watford. Forgiveness is therefore begged for the fact that, until just recently, I had never visited the Peak District.
Beautiful, isn’t it? Lush hills turn into sheer-faced mountains, conjoined by wide valleys, covered intermittently in heather and peat bogs and grazing sheep. Overlapping a railway line miraculously surviving from a bygone era, serpentine roads meander their way through a series of picturesque villages, flanked by flint walls and cottages that soothe the city-dweller’s soul.
Not many of these roads are fast (not if you have any respect for your own safety, anyway), but some of them allow you to get up to 60mph for a time. And as you will well know, speed is hardly a prerequisite for a corner to be fun; it’s all about how you can get from one to the next.
Piloting my Mini Convertible Cooper S with my friend from his Nottingham home, through
Bakewell and up to Blue John Cavern, I came to thoroughly appreciate the compact Convertible’s combination of a lithe chassis, accurate and weighty steering and strong performance. (A shout-out to the chap enjoying his 1960s Alfa Romeo Spider who, seeing our intention and recognising his relative lack of pace, allowed us past; the opposite to Derbyshire’s most cautious Kia Sportage driver.)
Carry an appropriate amount of speed into the approaching corner and the Mini will follow you obediently to the apex, then get its head down and power out at a lick.
I don’t like the description of Mini’s ‘go-kart handling’ because, if you’ve ever had a go in a kart, you will know that the chassis lacks any sophistication whatsoever; and that couldn’t be less true of this car.
The handling, now a hallmark of the Mini brand, really is great. Even when reined in because the road surface was wet, it still shone.
It’s all made even more enjoyable if you stick the automatic gearbox into manual mode and use the steering wheel-mounted shift paddles to anticipate the gear you want for a bend and to make the rapid acceleration out an involved process.
I just wish we could have had the soft top retracted for more than a few minutes on our jaunt; despite it being July, mist hung over the landscape and rain was never far away. I guess that’s the price you pay for such verdancy.
This was almost as much of a let-down as the ride comfort. While I understand that much of the Mini’s agility is owed to the stiffness of its suspension, it really can be quite unpleasant, so much so that on especially bad roads I find myself devoting some attention to avoiding larger potholes and ruts.
On a couple of occasions, I’ve had my passenger genuinely jump and express concern after we’ve clattered over one; and on less-than-smooth surfaces, the constant jostling has made it obvious to me that I was a bit too inactive during the lockdowns…
I wonder whether the adjustable sports suspension you get on Sport trim (mine is an Exclusive) would allow the car to relax a bit more?
As well as a new appreciation for my Mini and the Midlands, I learned something else on this trip: ‘party mode’. My friend used to work at Mini, and he revealed that if you hold the ambient lighting switch through every colour option, it then goes into slowly fading between each of them. It creates a great night-driving vibe.