MINI have kindly provided us with a MINI Cooper S to live with for a week. 23rd November: Arrival Day.

Starting Miles: 2483
Miles today: 41
Average MPG (according to trip computer): 28.8 mpg (imperial)
Average Speed (according to trip computer): 29.2 mph
Pictures: Photos from the day
Forum discussion: Here

Today the MINI Cooper S arrived, in all it’s yellow and black spledour. The car pulled up about 10:30am, and as I spend most of the daylight hours looking after our 3 year old Son, he was also here to see the car when it arrived. Initial impressions from him were it’s better than my Chili Red 2006 MINI Cooper S. Why? Because it had yellow door handles!

Anyway, aside from yellow door handles, the car (£17,245 worth) came kitted out with Chrome Line Interior, Colour Line - Mellow Yellow, Front Fog Lights, Interior Lights Pack, Manual Air Conditioning, Passenger Seat Height Adjustment, On-Board Computer and, wait for it, Velour Floor Mats. As such the car has 16″ s-winder alloy wheels, and the standard suspension (as opposed to optional “sport”).

So, obviously with only just over 40 miles covered in the first day there’s very little to report in terms of how the car drives on the familiar country lanes and fast dual carriageways around our area, but so far so good. The small things that have been picked up so far include:

• If you leave a door open, a little graphic comes up on the rev counter to show you which door it is, and an alarm sounds.
• If you leave the headlights on and switch off the car they can all switch off and on again when you restart (available on previous models), however with the new model, in this mode when you unlock the car the sidelights come on to “welcome you home”.
• As mentioned before on the forums, the interior lights package interior lights don’t all light the same shade on most colours (blue and orange are fine). Weird one that.
• The chrome interior door pull feels a bit chunkier and more tactile than the outgoing model.
• The stereo and centre stack look better at night with the lights on than in the day!
• The stereo controls do get easier, but still are not great to operated, and slightly illogical!
• The handling is pretty good, smoother, and at some points on our local lanes a little “swimmy” maybe, but the grip and road manners are very good. Less vague and bouncy than maybe was expected from a “non sports suspension” model.
• The engine is great, but sounds a little rattly on idle when cold from outside the car.
• The headlights (halogens) seem so MUCH better than the halogens on the outgoing (facelift) Cooper S.
• The MPG seems worrying low, almost exactly what we’d expect from a supercharged S.

In addition to this, I found that the rear seat access seems much better than on previous models (veyr handy for fitting/removing a child seat in the rear). And the Maxi-Cosi Priori XP seat we use is a very good fit, it fits in the back of the new MINI even more snug than it did in the old.

Today we wheeled out the family collection of Cooper S to do a quick “sandwich shot” session, with the new model between an ‘02 Cooper S and an ‘06 Cooper S. Nothing fancy, be we’ll be taking a lot more photos, and reporting every day on how we’re getting on.