2011 Mini Cooper S: A Freshly Facelifted Time Machine

Life is too short to drive a boring car. For the first time in mankind’s history, the latest generations of homo sapiens have a shorter life expectancy than the ones previous. The result of too much time spent stagnating, this should be frightening news, and yet no one seems to notice. With such comparative trivialities as the economy, politics, and local sports garnering more headlines than what some are calling the creation of an extinction trend, it all seems to be part of a trend of passive living in which people engage in the act of communicating their existence rather than living it. But reading online headlines, checking email, and updating various statuses simply isn’t easy when you’re out on the road, and is a task that gets subsequently more difficult as your signal bars are reduced to zero. This is why the Mini Cooper S is great. 

Now nearing the end of its product cycle, it’s somewhat amazing how fresh the timeless Mini shape still manages to look. However, fresh as the shape may be, Mini’s designers haven’t completely neglected the details for 2011. Required to make revisions to the bumper design in order to meet new pedestrian crash safety standards, Mini has taken the opportunity to retouch a few other things; most notably the lower grillwork. Bearing a less fluid, more sharply creased profile in all Mini models, the Cooper S now features a pair of very cool (and cooling) functional brake cooling ducts on either side of the grille. Above, black headlight surrounds are now optional on all but the top-end John Cooper Works edition and when filled with the optional Xenon headlights, will now respond to steering wheel inputs by turning to “see” around corners. Out back, LED brake lights come standard, while the reverse lights go south to occupy their new position in the rear bumper. 

If the overall effect of these visual changes is a slightly more manic-looking Mini, then it’s a book perfectly capable of being judged by cover. Having gleaned a further 4 horsepower from the turbocharged 1.6 litre engine for a total of 181, driving the ridiculously grippy little Mini Cooper S is best equated to controlling a rabid squirrel afflicted with a serious cocaine addiction. Direction changes are subconscious affairs, and acceleration is accomplished in great, leaping bouts of turbocharger boost-induced torque. Sprinting from apex to apex with the inexhaustible energy of a Chihuahua, it’s definitely not the smooth, linear, effortless experience you’ll find in a BMW sports car. No, with a solid chassis sporting a tiny wheelbase, it’s anything but. Bumps that would be divided up between the front and rear suspension are experience all at once in the Mini, and the rigid suspension won’t let you forget that. Likewise, the front end, although hooked up to a very advanced differential complete with brake biasing systems and fitted with very performance-oriented tires, will still struggle to maintain grip when the boost pegs out and 177 foot pounds of torque give the steering wheel a mind of its own. Thankfully the steering column is about the same length as Patrice Bergeron’s finger nearly became, and is as accurate and precise as a finely made rifle to boot. Add in a slightly irregular road surface dusted with debris, and you’re in for one hell of a hectic, wild, and generally ferocious trip.

And, thanks to the tiny little cars relatively light weight and ridiculously efficient engine (which benefits from a flatter powerband thanks to the addition of BMW’s VANOS variable intake valve timing), chances are good that all those mid-corner corrections will leave you well-dampened with sweat long before you exhaust the car’s fuel supply. Although containing just 50 litres of high test fuel (filling up with regular will simply reward you with less power and a poorer fuel economy figure that more than offsets the cost differential between 87 and 92 octane), I managed to eke nearly 700 kilometres of mixed driving out of my tester, and could have undoubtedly improved upon that figure had I amputated the lead extension I found fixed to my right leg. But where would the fun be in that?

And fun is, after all, what this car is all about. Head out onto the open road, and the trivialities of daily life and the interconnected web in which we live will slip further and further away with each passing mile. And thanks to its absurdly good fuel economy, there’s no reason not to put as many miles between you, and cellular reception, as possible. Because although getting down to the business of driving in this snorting, backfiring, torque-steering, explosively rabid rodent of a car may be a ton of fun, it’s also the Cooper S’ ability to resurrect the long-defunct Sunday drive that deserves to be taken notice of. Capable of taking you as far from civilization without breaking your wallet’s spine, it reintroduced me to the highways and byways of my childhood; roads not travelled since family camping excursions and summer vacation-celebrating road trips taken when the price of gas was less than half of its current rate. But most importantly? It brought me back to a time before the era of social media and cell phones, when entertainment was actively pursued, sights were seen in person, and the world legitimately enjoyed in a first hand manner. It was simply awesome.