Next up, Australia's CarPoint.com. Here's an excerpt:

It's a little ripper, really impressive on the road. Sure it's slower and heavier than the hard top, but you expect that. And given it started as a 1115kg coupe, the extra 135kg is acceptable. This extra weight does sap performance in higher gears where a lack of torque is quite noticeable. But the lower gears have been shortened and are fine for getting up to speed and shuffling around town.

Those hankering for a soft top sports car will need to make a few personal compromises if they buy a Mini. It'll do nothing but impress with its tenacious grip, communicative go-kart handling and light footed nimbleness, but the lack of grunt makes speed conservation between corners a must. Drop the revs, lose a few km/h and it takes a while to get them back. The naturally aspirated Cooper we tested certainly makes all the right, sporty sounds, but the incredibly slow sweep of the tacho gives lie to the engine's talk.

Relinquish your need for straight-line speed and the Cooper will only delight. The rather bluff windscreen and finicky rear wind blind deliver an amazingly still cabin roof-down, that allows conversation without extra volume even at 100km/h. That rear wind blind is only useable in concert with an empty rear seat — engineers wanted to place it behind the rear seats, but wind being wind, tumbled into the cabin closer to the windscreen than they hoped. This dictated its placement, ahead of the rear head rests and across the rear seat.

The rest of the article is devoted to the entire MINI range. You can check it out here.