R&T Columnist Gives Us His Take on the MINI

From Peter Egan's Column in Road & Track:

“Have you driven the new Mini Cooper S?” my friend Mike Mosiman asked over the phone late last autumn.

“No,” I replied.

“Oh, man! You gotta drive this thing! I just bought one last week in gray and white, and I absolutely love it. I'll bring it right over so you can take a test drive.”

…The first thing that struck me about this supercharged car was not only that it was very quick, but that it was deceptively fast, cruising effortlessly at a relaxed and quiet 75-85 mph. Not at all the hyper wind-up toy I'd been expecting.

“Jeez,” I said, “if I owned this car I'd get tickets all the time. We're going 80 and it feels like about 54 mph.”

A few weeks later, I got a call from Tom Harrer, an old racing buddy who used to drive a TR-4 and an S2000 in the SCCA. He told me he and his wife Anne were picking up their new green Mini in Milwaukee and would be coming through the Madison area. So we invited them to dinner, and Barb and I got to take a drive in their standard, non-supercharged Mini.

Nice car, and in some ways I liked it better than the S model, just because you have to work it a little harder to go fast. Simpler styling, too, more like the old Mini…

A few weeks later, friend Richie Mayer called to say he'd taken delivery of his Mini. “This thing really is fun,” he said. “You've got to drive it.”

…Richie likes the car so much, it seems to have temporarily nullified his usual passion for buying and restoring hopelessly shot old Alfas.

“I'm looking at an old Alfa GTV,” he told me, “but I don't know why I would drive it instead of the Mini. The Mini has so many things going for it; it's neat-looking, fun to drive and you can go anywhere without having to work on it. And it's new!”

I frowned hard and tried to grasp the possibility that those four attributes could all exist simultaneously in the same car.

It seems to me this happens only every five or 10 years. The Mazda Miata had that capacity to reawaken car enthusiasm among the faithful, and so did the Porsche Boxster in recent times. And now the Mini, which, I believe, passes the single most stringent test of good design: When you spot one on the highway, you are helpless not to point it out to others.

Your right arm levitates of its own volition and points at the passing car like a magnetized compass needle, and your voice automatically says, “Look, there goes a Mini!”

Forty-four years after their introduction, the old ones still do this too. It never fails

I think the sentiment in this column is what separates the MINI from cars like the new Beetle or the PT Cruiser. At their core those cars are nothing but tall Golfs or Neons. At it's core the MINI is nothing short of a phenomenon.

You can read the entire column here.