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Lodging Planner for Dunsmuir Railroad Park - Oct. 11 - 13, 2024

  Three days of MINIs, friends, forests, and old railroad cabooses. NOTICE: To all Registered Club Members interested in attending this 3-da...

TTAC Reviews The 2012 MCS Coupé

The Truth About Cars reviews the 2012 MCS Coupé and clearly has a love hate relationship.  Check out these passages:
Add to that the cut-down cockpit of the Mini coupé and embrace the added impracticality of rear blind-spots like an Imperial Star Destroyer and a pillbox front view. Is the light green yet? Better stick your head out the window to check. I am not an overly tall person, but when first in line at the lights, I learned to follow the lead of the cross-traffic.

Ticking off a few more demerits, cargo space: pretty negligible. Ride quality: nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Mix in a back parcel shelf that rattles like an Army of Darkness can-can line and you might think I’ve little love lost for the two-seater Mini. But you’d be wrong.

Like a dream. Like a go-kart. Like it’s on rails.

When it comes to handling clichés, take your pick and apply it to this latest member of the MINI range: the Cooper S coupé. Just don’t expect to make any sense.

This ain’t no go-kart: it grips over bumpy pavement rather than skittering sideways like a skipped stone. And as for going around a bend on rails, Thomas the Tank Engine would flop over on his flank at half the g’s that a Cooper S coupé pulls while scrabbling through a corner.

Depress the Sport button (why should you even have to?) and thrill to the declarative *pop-pop-pop* of improperly combusted fuel. It’s a cheery flatulence that must surely be artificial in some way, given our draconian emissions laws, but try to keep the grin off your face. I dare ya.



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