During a walk in Dresden, Germany, today, I was reminded of Dan's central exhaust tattoo post on our 2007 Mini Cooper S. You'll note that the pipes on this well-preserved old-world Mini (ill-fitting driver door excepted) stick out, too.
But I bet it has a spare tire.
Erin Riches, Senior Editor
The other night I was dropping my friend off at her apartment in the 2007 Mini Cooper S when this car coming from the other direction slowly drove up to us. When I looked over to see what the driver's problem was, she said annoyed, with eyes squinting, "Your brights are on." "They are?" I replied, surprised since I don't remember activating them. "Yes. They are," she said while driving away.
I looked at the dash. Nope, no high beam icon. Then I pulled the headlight stalk to see if it the high beams were on. Nope, they weren't. Silly lady just mistook the Mini's xenons (part of the Sport package) for brights. Whatev.
I'm not the best Photoshop artist but above on the right is what my driveway (and that SUV) looks like with the brights on, the left is when they're off. When they're bright, they're really bright.
Caroline Pardilla, Deputy Managing Editor @ 18,058 miles
I've never been a fan of the central exhaust on or 2007 Mini Cooper S, or any example of this layout, for that matter.
For one, it looks weird. I can't get used tot he fact that the central location is somehow too ... biological. At least there are two exhaust ports instead of one.
And I also strongly resent the Mini's central location because the muffler routing eliminates all possibility of a spare, forcing the use of run-flat tires. Even with run-flats, I'd rather have a spare because driving out west involves distances that are too damn far to find a replacement tire within the meager mileage limit
of a run-flat. Besides, the hyper-stiff sidewalls tense-up the ride and destabilize the handling on lumpy asphalt. I'd much rather have "normal" tires and a spare to go with them.
All of this is well and good. But last night it got personal.
Continue reading 2007 Mini Cooper S: Central Exhaust Tattoo.
Eleven months. That's how long we drove the Cooper S before the service light popped on for the first time. At just over 17,000 miles.
Service was free under MINI's 3 year/36,000-mile maintenance plan. So when we pulled into Long Beach MINI we also decided to replace the cracked windshield. The service tech seemed to feel bad for us when he drew up the $1,400 estimate.
We'd have walked out and ordered aftermarket glass if we owned the car. But since it's on loan to us the best move was to replace the glass at the dealership. MINI required the vehicle sit at their garage overnight, and charged us $1231.67 for the repair ($725 of that for labor).
Mike Schmidt, Vehicle Testing Coordinator @ 17,386 miles
Our long-term Mini Cooper S is rated at 26 mpg city, 34 highway and 29 combined, which is already significantly better than every other pocket rocket on the market today (actually those are the '08 numbers; '07 models are rated at 25/32/28, probably because those numbers were just converted on paper from the previous EPA estimates, which were based on the old methodology). And check this out: during a 60.5-mile straight shot on the highway yesterday, I consumed exactly 1.612 gallons of gas. I'll save you the calculating effort -- that's 37.5 mpg.
Now this would be a blogworthy achievement even for our efficiency-minded Ford Focus (24 mpg city, 33 highway, 28 combined). But in the Mini's case, we're talking about 37.5 mpg from a car that will rip off 0-60 sprints in the mid-sixes whenever the mood strikes. I think this could very well be a historic first -- can you think of any other car, past or present, that matches the Mini on both counts? Pretty amazing stuff.
Josh Sadlier, Associate Editor, Edmunds.com @ 17,547 miles
It took a while to engineer a comfy seating position as I settled into the Mini this weekend. The problem concerned the location of the seat-adjustment lever. I wanted to tweak the angle of the seatback. The lever that manages this task is located not to the left of the seat, but to its right, buried in a deep, dark abyss next to the parking brake; I felt like I needed a searchlight and an anchor sling to access it. Making things worse is the fact that it's hard to fine-tune the seatback's slope, since the lever's adjustments are made in fairly large increments...Of course, once that fiasco was behind me, the Mini was fun to pilot. Pile in, turn it on and go.
Warren Clarke, Automotive Content Editor @ 16,945 miles
Over the weekend, I gave some thought to Kurt's last post, the one about our 2007 Mini Cooper S hatch's overstyled interior. And I do agree: Although materials quality and fit and finish are greatly improved over our long-ago departed '02 Cooper S, the cabin details are even more overdone.
Really, though, the entire car looks like a gimmick, thanks to the excessive fidelity to retro iconography. It's just that this happens to be the most fun-to-drive gimmick on the planet...
Continue reading 2007 Mini Cooper S: New Accessory.
We now have an answer to the question, "Will our long-term 2007 Mini Cooper S ever need an oil change?" Yes. In 800 miles.
The above text-and-pictogram now flashes every time you start the car, but only for an instant. It took me four tries to capture the moment...
Erin Riches, Senior Editor @ 16,479 miles
Styled. That's what the Mini's problem is. It's been styled to have all the retro cues that you can fit in a car this small. It's got a big (obnoxious) center mounted speedometer...
Continue reading 2007 Mini Cooper S: Retro Grade.
Mr. Kavanagh isn't the only staffer who made a pilgrimage to Sequoia National Park over the long weekend. With a friend in town and the long-term Mini at our disposal, we headed for the selfsame hills, largely in hopes of finding one of those hollowed-out trees that you can drive through. No dice on that front, unfortunately, but we did walk around the biggest tree in the world (39.5 feet in diameter!) and saw a bunch more that weren't much smaller. It's a truly Brobdingnagian landscape -- you can't really conceive of how large these trees are until you've seen them in person.
There's another picture after the jump (gotta give a grateful shout-out to Austin, the aforementioned friend, for helping me stitch it together), but first let's talk about the second half of this post's title: Why wouldn't I buy a Mini like ours?
Continue reading 2007 Mini Cooper S: Roadtrip to Sequoia...and why I wouldn't buy one.
Everyone talks about how fun to drive our 2007 Mini Cooper S is. But I've found it has an amazing towing capacity. Look at this trailer I lugged around with our Cooper.
Not...
Continue reading 2007 Mini Cooper S: Tow Rating.
Continue reading 2007 Mini Cooper S: Blipping Awesome!.
Continue reading 2007 Mini Cooper S: That Old-Time Turbo Feel.
Remember when Donna reported that the Mini literally stinks? One of our readers guessed it was mold and after a waff of Mini stank a few weeks ago, that's certainly my guess as well. It's pretty disgusting and I'd much rather sit in a hot car that slowly die from mold spores being blown into my face. Anyway, before rushing to the dealer, we decided to take a holistic approach...
Continue reading 2007 Mini Cooper S: Heating the Stink.
Yesterday our 2007 Mini Cooper S zipped past the 15,000 mile mark. Considering there are still three months to go before it must be returned to Mini, I'd say it'll pass the 20,000 miles mark during it's 12 months in our fleet. And that means we like this little hatchback.
In case you haven't noticed, if a car doesn't make the 20,000 mile mark, it's for one of two reasons...
Continue reading 2007 Mini Cooper S: Blasting Past 15,000 miles.
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