Category: Mini

A few weeks back we enjoyed a great day at Phillip Island thrashing around in a series of brightly coloured gen-three Mini JCWs. Now we have come back to reality having road tested one for a week on our home turf on the Gold Coast – traffic, speed cameras, rough and ready roads, the full catastrophe. Given the high-tech nature of the all-new third-generation John Cooper Works (JCW) and engineering ability of BMW, which runs Mini these days, it didn’t come as a surprise that the real-world didn’t faze the… Read more

Not to labour the point too much, but many original Mini owners, their families and friends, while not exactly in their dotage, can be physically challenged getting into the back of a three-door hatchback. At the other end of the scale, young families with kids to accommodate in the rear seats face an awkward lift, especially with a squirming toddler or two. It makes sense, then, to ease both burdens by adding a couple of back doors. This Mini has done that with its latest hatchback, without subtracting from the… Read more

Mini purists have long since given up looking away when instructed, so a five-door Mini is just another in a long line of abominations that fill the internet with bile. But, when your arch-rivals have a five-door to pull in the punters, you have to compete on level terms or you lose customers and anger dealers who care nothing for history or internet forum rage. And so we now have a five door Mini hatch. Not the high-riding Countryman based on the old car, but a fresh, stretched version of… Read more

Trim, taut and terrific: okay, that’s old hat, but nothing could better describe the new Mini Cooper. A member of the 2014 Mini Hatch family, the Cooper, carries the famous name with aplomb. The new hatchback comes in three versions – Cooper, Cooper D and Cooper S – with the choice of two petrol (three and four-cylinder) and one diesel engine (three-cylinder) attached to either a six-speed manual or six-speed automatic transmission. The new Mini Hatch has its ups and downs . . . in the nicest possible way. It… Read more

Introducing a car as well-known as the Mini Cooper S brings back images of twin-tank bricks-on-wheels sliding across the top of Mount Panorama or slithering down the Col de Turini. With the all-new model Mini has come a new, beefed up Cooper S, powered by a 2.0-litre turbocharged four cylinder. Which is one cylinder and a half-litre up on the three-cylinder Cooper, not to mention a $10,000 price increase. VALUE The Mini range starts at $24,500 for the manual 1.2-litre turbo One. Our road test car, the Cooper S, starts… Read more