How is the New MINI in Wet Driving?

With fall in full swing storms can bring lots of rainy days. Autocar recently put seven cars to task in wet conditions and MINI was in the mix.

Let’s start by saying the MINI was the only front wheel drive car of the bunch, but that’s okay because MINIs are used to standing out in a crowd anyway. Five of the cars used in the comparison were AWD models including the Range Rover Sport, Porsche 911 Carrera 4S, Volkswagen Golf R, the Audi RS4 and Nissan’s GT-R. If the deck looks a little stacked against the MINI, it is. If they’d thrown in a Ford Focus, VW GTI, Chevy Sonic and  Fiat 500 the MINI would have been among a few classmates. Still, it’s interesting to see how it performed.

The remaining two cars in the challenge were, of course, the MINI Cooper representing the FWD category and a lonely Toyota GT86 representing RWD cars notoriously hard to drive in wet conditions.

To summarize, the MINI Cooper ranked sixth out of seven. Not a great placement, but considering the performance specifications of the competition, the results aren’t too surprising.

One area the MINI ruled them all was 70 – 0 MPH braking. Our favorite little hatchback ranked first by coming to a complete stop in 55.2m.

Unfortunately, the competition in this roundup was tough on the Cooper as its next best showing was fourth in 30 – 0 MPH braking. It placed sixth in just about everything else. Of course a good set of winter tires might have changed this equation, but they would do so for all vehicles if so equipped. Don’t feel too badly though, the Toyota apparently slid across the pavement more than any other car in the challenge thanks to its rear wheel drive configuration.

At least there is one silver lining in this rain cloud: If you need to stop in a straight line in wet conditions, you’l be better off in your MINI than in some much more expensive vehicles.

You can read the whole comparison here.