Mini Cooper 3-door S: Trading Sensibility To Put A Grin On Your Face

Driving the Mini Cooper 3-door S around the twisties of Aamby Valley brought a big smile plastered on my face. Its taut chassis, rev-happy engine and go kart-like handling makes it super fun to drive, especially around corners. Now that’s something that's been true for the Mini for a while now. But it’s not everyday you’ll be pushing your car to its limits, right? So how does the Mini fare in everyday conditions? We spent some time with the hot hatch to tell you the answer. 

Exterior Design 

The Cooper 3-door looks quirky and turns heads, especially in this spicy Chilli Red hue. 

Attention to detail is top notch. For instance, the circular headlights with the round DRLs look cool. Pair that with the black grille and bumper, and you've got a fascia that has an aggressive demeanour. A small touch we love is the way the DRLs and the beams animate and do a dance while unlocking and locking the car. Looks cool, but a point to note is that the hazards don’t blink while locking the car and that might confuse you into thinking the car isn’t locked. 

Coming to the side, our test car’s twelve-spoke alloy rims with the low-profile 205/45 R17 tyres not only look meticulously crafted, but lend a sporty stance too. You also have multiple paint options as well as rim options, which you can mix and match to cater to your styling needs. 

The ‘Union Jack’ insignia for the tail lamps, which hark back to Mini’s British origin, looks lovely and is a great design touch, especially when illuminated at night. And topping up the cake is the dual exhaust outlets, that not only makes the rear look sporty, but sounds throaty (more on that later).  

Interior 

Inside, the Mini’s dashboard, with its quirky round-themed cabin looks sporty and unique. Once again, attention to detail is superb, especially the finer details. Gotta love to use the toggle switches for the starter button and other important functions, which seems straight out of an aeroplane’s cockpit.

Another touch that stands out is the circular ambient lighting ring around the 8.8-inch touchscreen infotainment system. It’s interactive, showing engine rpm or the amount of space behind while backing up using the parking sensors with different colours to tell you when to stop. Super cool touch, Mini!  

Then there’s the infotainment system, which has colourful graphics, fast response times and is super easy to use. It’s basically BMW’s older i-Drive 7 unit, which you can operate using touch inputs or the toggle switch in the lower central console. The driver gets a chunky three-spoke steering wheel and behind him is a digital driver’s display. Not the largest unit around and not the most customisable, but it does the job with crisp graphics. 

Check Out: Mini Cooper 3-door Image Gallery

Quality of the materials is excellent and everything feels bolted solid. Be it the switches or the stalks, they operate with a nice damped touch and feel rich to use. You also get soft-touch materials on the top half of the dash, but the lower half is finished in hard plastics, which are of good quality, nevertheless. 

Interior quality and ambience is top notch, but where this cabin doesn’t score well is practicality. The door pockets are slim and can’t hold much, and you just have two cupholders in the front. Even for rear-seat occupants, save for a cupholder between the seats, there’s not much storage to keep you knick-knacks. 

Features Onboard 

Features include an 8.8-inch touchscreen infotainment system, dual-zone climate control, a fully digital driver’s display, a wireless phone charger, dual-pane panoramic sunroof, cruise control, manually adjustable front seats with height adjustment, ambient lighting and keyless entry with push-button start. 

As for passenger safety, you get dual airbags, ABS with EBD, a rear parking camera with sensors, electronic stability control, and a tyre pressure monitoring system. 

While it has the bases covered, at this price point, powered front seats, more airbags, a branded audio system and ADAS would have made it a more well-rounded package. 

That said, like most Minis, the Cooper 3-door S is offered with plenty of optional extras, where you can customise the paint, interior trim, add features and even have a more sophisticated suspension system. In fact, the total list of options you get with Cooper 3-door totals up to a whopping Rs 25 lakh! 

Here’s a list of the priciest options you can get with the Cooper 3-door S:

Cabin Space

The Mini is a low car and you need to hunker yourself into the low-slung cabin. But once inside, the snug front seats are comfortable with plenty of underthigh and lateral support, even for a hefty person. One downside is the seats aren’t powered, a bummer considering this car’s Rs 42.7 lakh (ex-showroom) price tag. Nevertheless, finding your driving position is super easy thanks to the healthy amount of travel that both the seat and steering offer. 

But the rear seats are best used by really small kids or your pooch. For starters, the front seats don’t tumble and just slide ahead. Combine that with a narrow opening and a low slung car, getting in and out isn’t the easiest. You really need to have a fit body to do a small gymnastic movement for getting in and out.

Check Out: Mini Cooper 3-door S Colours

The bench, in itself, is quite comfortable with good underthigh and lateral support. And our DOP, Vikrant Date, who’s almost six feet tall, even had a bit of headroom to spare. But legroom is almost non-existent and even your kids might complain if you intend to take them for a long drive. We would classify this car as a two-seater, with the rear seats best reserved for small journeys. 

Engine 

Buckle up and thumb the starter button with a pulsing lighting animation and the 2-litre turbo-petrol engine wakes up with a throaty growl. It belts out 178PS, drives the front wheels via a 7-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission and is mighty fast off the line. Mini claims a 0-100kmph time of 6.7 seconds, which we weren’t able to test. 

But in town, it is peppy to drive and feels effortless with the box shuffling through the gears like slicing a hot knife through butter. A quick overtake just needs a dab on the throttle, where it shuffles down a gear or two and within moments, you’ll be going faster than you'd expect. There are also three drive modes that alter the engine’s mapping: 

• Eco - Dials down the throttle response for a smooth and easy drive, shifts gears up quickly 

• Mid - Offers a good balance between laid back and fast driving 

• Sport - Dials up the throttle response, holds gears for spirited driving

Out on the open road, this engine is mighty fun to drive and it won’t complain if you frequently push to its limits. It’s rev-happy, hits three-digit speeds quickly, and is properly fast on the open road. The gearbox offers lightning-quick shifts and is always ready for action, be it a quick downshift or upshift. Also, the paddle shifters let you take manual control for that added bit of fun. 

More Details: Mini Cooper 3-door S Specifications

Adding to the overall driving experience is the throaty exhaust note with pops and crackles as well the sound of the turbo spooling up for added character and aural experience. 

Ride And Handling

Let us make this easy for you: the Mini Cooper 3-door, with its stiff suspension and low-profile tyres isn’t a comfortable riding car. In fact, we would advise you to spend the Rs 85,000 extra and opt for the adaptive suspension, which is money well spent and should make things better. On its stock setup, you feel most of the surfaces and shocks from the road inside the cabin. And undulations on uneven surfaces result in the car bouncing up and down, which gets irritating after a point.

It does become a bit better when you drive it a bit faster, but if you want your car to have good ride quality, look elsewhere. Also, its low ground clearance and profile tyres means you need to exercise caution while going over broken roads or speed breakers. 

On the positive side, the stiff suspension results in a brilliant handler with razor-sharp dynamics. Find a set of twisties, set the engine in Sport mode, and you’ll have a blast driving this car with a wide smile plastered on your face. Combine that with the throaty exhaust note, this Mini will make you grin all the time. And the cherry on the cake is the steering, which is communicative, quick to change directions and points the car where you intend it to go. 

Straight line stability, as expected from a Mini, is reassuring and solid. And when you need to slow down, you’d be happy to know that the brakes have a solid bite and slow you down quickly. 

Overall, the Mini Cooper 3-door is a mighty fun car to drive, if you can live with the jarring ride. 

Verdict 

Time to sum up. The Mini Cooper 3-door S is a mighty fun car to drive, thanks to its involving driving experience and go-kart-like handling. The quirky styling and lovely attention to details makes you feel that extra special owning it. And the best bit is, it has that exclusivity factor of owning a Mini, which no other car in this price point does. 

But there are some big negatives to the package. It isn’t the most practical around, especially with in-cabin storage and space. This car can be best classified as a two-seater and the rear seats can be tight for kids as well. And on top of that, its jarring ride quality makes it difficult to live with, especially if your commute involves driving over some bad road conditions. 

So if you’re considering this as your daily driver, getting other equally priced models such as an Audi A4 would make better sense as it's more practical. And if performance is your thing and your budget can be stretched a bit then the BMW M340i has similar performance but is more liveable on a day to day basis. But if you want a weekend toy – as your second or third car – that’s small, fun to drive and has a novelty factor, the Mini still is the Mini. 

Images Shot By - Vikrant Date