► Mini’s new-generation Cooper Electric
► Ours first taste in prototype form
► The brand is going back to basics
Squint through the psychedelic camouflage, and you can make out that chief designer Oliver Heilmer and his team have radically reduced the increasingly bloated Mini to come close to the essence of the Alec Issigonis original.
But is that just skin deep or does it reflect a return to classic Mini eagerness? To find out, six months ahead of launch, we’ve driven an early Cooper SE on a test track and over a one-hour mountain road loop through Salzburg and Tyrol.
Come on then – get me up to speed…
You’ve seen the pictures already, so we’ll leave how it looks to you. But here are some stats: It’s still front-wheel drive. Its 53kWh battery needs to be recharged every 250 miles or so in real life. The initial consumption works out at a punchy 4.4 miles per kWh.
Top speed, restricted in this pre-production car to 94mph, will reportedly be lifted to 125mph in the production Cooper SE. Acceleration from 0-62mph? A lively 6.7sec.
Inside, (no official pictures yet, so you’ll have to take our word for it) the redesigned seats are comfortable and generously adjustable, but long-legged drivers may have a problem with the wide, low-mounted toggle bar. Although the three-spoke steering-wheel is studded with pushbuttons and multi-mode switches, the main interface is the notably larger freestanding round touchscreen accessible to driver and passenger. It’s complex, yet anyone who can handle a smartphone should be able to master it.
And there is more to come, like over-the-air updates, third-party apps, additional experience modes, surprise Christmas and birthday gifts, on-dash projections from your private image bank, a variety of sound and light stagings, multiple user profiles, bespoke ambience variations – you name it.
You’ve not got long then – let’s drive!
The driving modes include one called Go-Kart, which speeds up the action, reduces driver assistance to a minimum and sharpens the feedback. Not enough drama? Deactivate DSC and brace yourself for lift-off oversteer enhanced by BMW’s yaw-moment enhancement tech. A couple of corners on the compact test track are wide enough to try it out, with heavy rain and the near-zero temperatures lowering the grip levels. It’s all very entertaining.
Front-wheel drive is of course a limiting factor through a solitary super-tight 180º bend, but as soon as the 243lb ft of instant torque grab the tyres, the compact crackerjack picks up speed quickly and keeps accelerating seamlessly until that blind right-hander calls for a change of direction, velocity and balance. This is fun, and we’re still only going seven-tenths.
On public roads, Green is the mode for hypermilers, while Core mode offers an adaptive mix of instant on-demand performance, fully connected sat-nav-assisted predicative driving and long-legged cruising which can either be relaxed or energetic.
Mini Cooper Electric: first impressions
Thankfully, the driving experience is a failsafe fallback proposition. Dynamics always were and still are the Mini’s forte. The new Cooper SE is again chuckable yet composed, concurrently involving and balanced, refined but never lacklustre. Simply silence that puerile soundtrack and enjoy handling and roadholding qualities Sir Alec would be proud of.
As Mini embraces digital and electric, thank goodness it still pulls out all the dynamic stops, based on this early drive.