While the 2007 Mini Cooper S, 2008 BMW 135i, 2008 Pontiac G8 GT, 2009 Dodge Challenger and 1984 Ferrari 308 GTSi didn't get enough votes to make it into the top five, each were clearly liked. One could also argue that these are more real-world favorites, as cars like the GT-R and R8, as cool as they are, are out of financial reach for most people.
Some of you might be wondering what happened to the 2005 Ford GT in all this. Well, it received -- ahem -- no votes. Zip. Not even owner and Editor-in-Chief Karl Brauer voted for it. When queried about this, Karl said he wasn't going to waste a vote on it because he knew not enough editors drove it to make it a memorable choice. He was right. So, a TKO, but a KO nonetheless for the otherwise iconic GT.
And with that, we conclude our Editors' Favorites. Hope you found it fun!
Categories: 1984 Ferrari 308 GTSi Quattrovalvole,2007 Mini Cooper S,2008 BMW 135i,2008 Pontiac G8 GT,2009 Dodge Challenger R/T
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
Categories: 2007 Mini Cooper S
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
Categories: 2007 Mini Cooper S
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...
Categories: 2007 Mini Cooper S
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
Categories: 2007 Mini Cooper S
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
Categories: 2007 Mini Cooper S
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
Categories: 2007 Mini Cooper S
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...
Categories: 2007 Mini Cooper S
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
Categories: 2007 Mini Cooper S
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...
Categories: 2007 Mini Cooper S
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...
Categories: 2007 Mini Cooper S
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...
Categories: 2007 Mini Cooper S
I think the Mini is my favorite car in our long term test group to drive for one reason only:
The thing is so dang easy to
blip shift
!
I'm not as good as the others on staff with the finer techniques of driving, but I try to practice my blip shifting while in traffic and around town. The Mini has a pretty responsive motor to rev it up, an easy throw gear, the pedals are nicely spaced apart and the clutch has a nice catch point. It's so easy it nearly over inflates your confidence.
When you get it just right and the little engine is buzzing loudly as you come to a corner, it's a sweet feeling. You can almost imagine you're
Lewis Hamilton
speeding through Monaco...
Continue reading...
Categories: 2007 Mini Cooper S
Turbocharged engines used to have a unique character, a.k.a. "turbo lag." You'd roll into the throttle from a stop, wait a few beats for the boost to kick in, and
whooooosh! The sudden rush of power would pin you back in your seat. Automotive journalists often had nasty things to say about turbo lag, but personally I enjoyed it...
Continue reading...
Categories: 2007 Mini Cooper S
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...
Categories: 2007 Mini Cooper S
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...
Categories: 2007 Mini Cooper S
It's that time again. On the eve of our four-car fuel-sipper comparison test, I thought I would calculate the lifetime fuel economy of another diminutive fuel sipper -- albeit one that's fun to drive. Since our last update, we've actually improved our Mini Cooper's fuel economy by 0.6 mpg! How about that!
Average MPG: 26.24
EPA Combined MPG: 29 (d'oh!)
Best Tank: 33.70 mpg
Worst Tank: 16.57 mpg
There was a fill-up that reported 40 mpg, however, the entry's penmanship was questionable and it just seemed too good to be true. So it's certainly possible that Brian Moody went on a 123-mile downhill road trip with a stiff tail wind, but I've thrown it out just in case and used the second-best tank...
Continue reading...
Categories: 2007 Mini Cooper S
When
IL
Senior Editor Erin Riches and I took a
road trip to Central California
this past weekend, we stayed at the (low) Quality Inn in Pismo Beach. This ended up being a big mistake as this particular motel seemed to attract nothing but college kids.
So from 10pm to 2am, these kids were running up and down the walkway outside of our motel room on the 2nd floor as their party was going off two doors down from ours. Sometimes they would even bang on our door and run away...
Continue reading...
Categories: 2007 Mini Cooper S
Various California Central Coast wineries were the destination for the 2007 Mini Cooper S over the weekend. As I'd expected, driving the Mini on all the back roads between Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo was a bigger treat than tasting various pinot noirs. As previously reported, any curvy road is fun with a Mini. However, roads with tighter, lower-speed turns show off the car's personality to best effect...
Continue reading...
Categories: 2007 Mini Cooper S
I had the Mini Cooper S this past weekend (I didn't notice the A/C stink) and I once again realized the vast improvements made to this car over the original new Mini. In fact, I'd venture to say that this one went down in only three areas: center stack ergonomics, styling and steering. Even the last one is a mixed reaction since the two-mode electric set-up is far friendlier in parking situations.
My girlfriend owned a 2005 Mini Cooper S and I subsequently logged quite a few miles behind the wheel in it -- including the same route I took this week to Moorpark, Calif...
Continue reading...
Categories: 2007 Mini Cooper S
