Fun that’s bigger than the car it comes in.
The 2012 MINI Cooper delivers 37 miles per gallon on the highway, and about 10 times as many “smiles per gallon,” a uniquely MINI metric. You can enjoy sports car fun and still pay a lot less for gas. You just need to be looking at the right car – the 2012 MINI Cooper Hardtop.
Other compact cars may get their owners to work reliably every day, but most leave “fun” out of the driving equation. When those owners get home, they don’t give their cars a second thought unless they need repairs or the neighborhood kid’s baseball goes through the windshield. The 2012 MINI Cooper Hardtop, with an MSRP of $20,200, shouts “fun” from the moment you look at it.
The term “iconic design” certainly gets bandied about haphazardly these days, but the MINI Cooper has earned the right to bandy it. The design springs from a 60-plus-year heritage chock full of hipness (each of The Beatles owned classic MINI models) and racing (the original Mini Cooper models won at Monte Carlo three times in a row).
How can the 2012 MINI Cooper Hardtop be so much more fun to drive than your average fuel-efficient small car? And, can “fun” be quantified? To answer the second question first, Edmunds INSIDE LINE recently tested the MINI Cooper and, among its other conclusions, said, “And did we mention it goes through the slalom at 70.4 mph, which is as fast as an M3 sedan?” In real world driving, that high-speed slalom romp translates into go-kart handling, and that translates into pure driving pleasure every time you drive, even if it’s just for routine errands.
To answer the first question, the MINI Cooper Hardtop is packed with premium powertrain and chassis engineering. Since its parent company makes the aforementioned M3, inheriting sporty genes is a given. Start with a rev-happy, double overhead-cam aluminum 1.6-liter engine equipped with the same VALVETRONIC intake valve control technology as it’s featured on BMW models.
Combine 121 hp with a vehicle weight barely over 2,500 pounds, sophisticated four-wheel independent suspension using aluminum components, plus a short-throw six-speed manual transmission and Dynamic Stability Control (DSC) with Corner Braking Control (CBC), and that rather long equation sums out to pure back road joy. When you’re changing lanes or cornering, for example, CBC optimizes braking at individual wheels to enhance the car’s stability through turns.
