It’s advisable to take a couple of minutes to orientate yourself with the controls for nothing in the MINI is where you expect it to be. Nor do the buttons look like those in any other car. For instance, the engine Start/Stop button is actually a red toggle switch in the middle of the centre console. It isn’t on the dash on either side of the steering wheel and it isn’t a big red or black button. Indeed, everything in the MINI seems ‘out of the box’. But there are some areas for improvement as well. For instance, I couldn’t fathom why the car couldn’t get a rear view mirror with auto anti-glare. The MINI’s continues to be a click-clack manual button operated one.
Start the engine, slot the auto transmission into D (for Drive) and the MINI pulls effortlessly from all sorts of speeds. The new 1.5-litre three cylinder twin turbo diesel engine from BMW is a refined unit and doesn’t feel like a three pot motor at all. In fact, if you haven’t read the tech specs before a test drive and come back thinking you’ve just driven a four cylinder engine, you’re up for forgiveness. The engine is a capable unit and pulls the car cleanly with practically no lag. Acceleration is brisk and if that’s not what you like you can either pace things up a bit or slow them down by selecting one of the three drive modes. The MINI engine offers a choice of three different ECU maps that can be filtered through at the press of a dash mounted button, even on the go. Go for Sport if you fancy some racy driving or get into Eco mode to save the planet. Default mode is Normal, which is sort of in between Sport and Eco. Needless to say Sport is the most fun mode to drive in but then if you’re running through peak traffic it’s best to save some petrol for later via the Eco mode. To help you save the planet you also get the benefit of auto start/stop, which can be switched off. The only downside to the new engine is that it seems to have lost a little bit of the edgy punchiness of the old four pot motor.
