Category: Hot Hatchbacks 
Price Range: No data available
Unassailable image, fantastic interior, strong residuals, excellent to live with, TLC package.
Pricey, limited room in the back, cheap seat tilt mechanism, dull engine note, not frantically fast.
The Mini has grown up a little and, although it lacks some of the sparkle of the original, it's still a cracking car - if not really a full-on hot hatch.
It may not look like it in the photos, but this is the second-generation new Mini, replacing the car launched to much acclaim in 2001. Since then, more than 840,000 Minis have been sold worldwide - over 200,000 in the UK alone - all of which are built at the Mini factory in Oxford.
Although it shares no body panels with the 2001 model, this remains very much a Mini. The interior has been overhauled and everything on the outside has grown a little.
The old supercharged Chrysler-sourced Brazilian-built engine has been replaced by Peugeot-BMW-developed British-built turbocharged 1.6-litre engine - as also found in the Peugeot 207 GTi.
Latest Readers' Drives About the MINI Cooper S
wrote on 16 12 2007
wrote on 23 01 2007