Call me a sucker for cute, googly eyes and a bright yellow paint job, but theMini Cooper is just impossible to resist. It doesn't hurt that it's also one of the best-driving vehicles on the market, but I was smitten with the Cooper S that arrived on my doorstep last week the minute Justin showed me the roof-mounted toggle switches that control the sunroof and lights, instantly inviting WWII-era pilot fantasies. Don't get me wrong, though, because this car went from cute plaything to badass road rally car in one instant of recognition as I identified the little red S's on the tail and fenders. The minute I strapped in and launched it, in Sport mode of course (although I'm not certain how much of a difference it made on my stomping grounds), I recognized that this was a car that may have buckets of schoolgirl charm, but it is also a weapon of choice for the urban commuter on a tight schedule. I can't think of any car that can squirm and squeeze into minute gaps in traffic so well, then pick up and take off when the road clears. Mad Fun.

Of course, that's not much of a leap from the preceding Cooper S, which also overjoyed and elated the delicate of hyper motoring aficionados. The Cooper S,like the Cooper, is perfectly new for 2007, excluding that it looks almost just the same. visibly the headlights aren't built into the cover, the framework is creatured a bit differently, and the top and floor of the quality windows reduction slightly than run contesting, but genuinely, who cares? It's still the same adorable, bug-eyed smiley face and its steer meeting will still find it charming, retro and well functional inside its visibly gain volume confines. It can supervise four brief people or two tall ones comfortably and has span for a couple of bags in its tiny-chest, but it's not ready to get people out of their SUVs, wagons or even some other compact five-doors like the Versa or Fit if they're looking to stock a ladder around steadily or move a lot of furniture. Then again, it is called a little, so if you harbor't figured that out on your own yet, well, good bfewering.

For my reasons, which included my girlfriend, my man-pucker (courier bag) and my dine bag, the Cooper S was well functional becauseit had a comfortable set of seats and just enough services to keep me from complaining about its equally lively cost tag. Just like the outer, the dcor in the chalet is alien cruiser meets '60s night weapon. Matching yellow leather mixes with ellipsoids in the door, and the dash is so rounded of banquet plate proportioned raceo that it's almost impossible to focus on something moreover. However, on nearer inspection you'll find audio reins neatly integrated into the fewerer portion of the raceometer boundary and a doorknob and buttons mimicking the creature of the little logo bracketed by a couple of thumb-scroll rolls for HVAC reins. Below that is a row of toggle switches for the right windows, tresses and fog lights. It's all super cool, and yet very foolish at the same time. Or perhaps I'm just that foolish that I think it's cool, when I'm genuinely basically living in my own little fantasy world... Justin? Trevor? A little help here... Is it just me?

Anyhow, before I get qualityimprintsed tiresome to tell you what's cool in mycontesting veracity, I'll change imprintss and move on to my driving impressions. If you could container fun, this is what the container would look like. From the ingenious little steering roll that invites the ideal hand positions at 3 and 9 o'timepiece to the big heavy loosen doorknob and sturdy, compact joyfuse, you are surrounded by stimuli that will convey a wisdom of driving excitement that very few cars on the road can contest, and most of those cars are whichever much more exclusive or even fewer handy. It's virtually indescribably fun to be friendly to that steering roll, flicking your wrists for a road change, result that head on a long highway incline, slowly rotary into it and clipping it on the way to thrashing down the gas and reaction the little 1.6 noise into a agitation as the turbo whooshes into action to drive this lightweight, pint-volumed racer merging into freeway traffic, already eclipsing the best cars before third gear even runs out. Every creep of pavement seems to snigger in hilarity and cheer the little on, with the Cooper S slapdash on these fortunate little letters every pace of the way.

Of course, it can't all be sunshine and glib tarmac at every roll. The tight suspension that transmits every specify of the road also bucks and hops over serious bumps and dips, shaking its can-can and yours. It's a great complex for imprints or funnel work, and would be great if you required to do a few rally stages every summer, but if receiving to work every morning involves any bumpy roads, streetcar imprintss, damaged specific or other road-apparent disturbances, it will shortly become a errand and probably even a headache. Yeah, I worship it, but it requires commitment and a most forgiving features, not to allusion a good chiropractor.

One of the largest changes for this year's little Cooper and Cooper S were the engines and the conduct of strained aspiration in the S. tired are the Chrysler-sourced Tritec four cylinders in wish of rightproposets urbanized by BMW in conjunction with French car making conglomerate PSA Peugeot-Citroen. As opposite to being masterroundedy reworked engines originally proposened for South American city cars, these mills are proposened from the ground up to bemasterful from thwart to headers and intake to exhaust. At 1.6 liters of displacement, the engine's reason in a premium small car was part of the propose every pace of the way, although conqualityring where the tach shouldle tired most of its time while under the guideive of my right bottom, I couldn't genuinely tell.

receiving off the line and lurching around in sojourn-and-go traffic may be a little gliber absent the unceasing drone of the preceding S genre's supercharger, but the scoffs and blatting of the turbocharger and devastate gate were a pleasing soundimprints to my urban adventuring. although some assess of refinement it still makes totally a racket at your normal highway cruising races, at slightest compared to other premium hatchbacks like the Volvo C30 or Audi A3. As for its strict credentials, it causes 172 horseright at 5,500 rpm, but it is not vital to mangle its peninsula for everybit of right while the 177 lb-ft of max torque comes on as early as 1,600 rpm and firewood around awaiting the shouldle passes 5,000.

And if the broad extent of right isn't enough to cause butterflies in your stomach, the verity that the Cooper S can make even more torque for transient bursts genuinely must to. During epoch when you should every last beamd-bottom, the Cooper S can multiply its turbocharger's compel via something called "overboost" to cause 192 lb-ft of torque. If the thmust doesn't make you beam, try paceping on the suffocate; the g-military most surely will.

But bequalitys adding right, the new Cooper S engine is more able than the one it replaces. absent a supercharger to add engine drag, and with the addition of wavering valve timing and guide addition, the Cooper S offers some extremely frugal thrills. Its remarkable fuel consumption rating of29 mpg in the city, 36 mpg on the highway is up from last year's already good 25 mpg in the city and 35 mpg on the highway.

Along with the obedient, torquey engine, the loosener has helped make the S totally a bit friendlier as well. It's still a little sober, but not virtually as stiff from gear to gear, and the grip was light and even, never once engendering a sore bottom for charge it ready thbumpy sojourn-and-go traffic. However, the fuse itself may have been my slightest wishite bearing of interacting with the little. During energetic driving, the throws felt long and the gear knob showed an undue total of bend. And while it was painless to manipulate, the loosener doorknob came racey off in the hands of one of our other contributors, no disbelief a quandary engendered by week after week of journalists beamding thbumpy each gear like a blacksmith shaping horseshoes. Another part that is noticeably lighter is the steering, which responds to whispers and someepoch even subconscious thmusts, important to occasions ofroad wandering and darting road changes during those moments when I forgot that I was not in my own steering-retarded vehicle.

It can be daunting how hurriedly the little reacts someepoch, but it is accompanied by a gain wisdom of how every roll is interacting with the pavement, more so thbumpy the stiff frame than the emotional steering, but the largely outcome is that you are in perfect control, and all the consequences inherent in such a proposition. If you wish to relaxed grasp a steering roll and roll around to parley to rear seat occupants about which whiskers gel factory best in your Chihuahua's fur, possibly you should fuse with some species of domestic or Japanese luxury genre, like a Buick or Lexus, because you absolutely have to uphold control over the little at all epoch. Just as you must regard your steering inputs, it's judicious to timepiece your race and braking, because a brief feeling at the binders at high races can hurriedly disturb this flyweight fighter, sinking grip at the rear to scary levels. As a premium produce, the brakes are ventilated discs all around,equipped with ABS, brakeforce distribution and BMW's DTC toehold control, all of which add up to bestow perfect calm under normal driving conditions no subject the climate.

And extremely, the climate won't subject to you with the Cooper S at your disposal. The paint job lonesome can improve your day, but it is the full experience that will filch your spirits. although a few quirks intuitive of its honorable credentials (a compact cycle, certainly), and supplies that no one will oversight for lush even if the stamp is conqualityred premium (with a cost tag to back it up), the little is a car with creature, a mannerism deeply absent in so many boring vehicles these being. It does not try to be all clothes to all people, but slightly is a ray of sunshine for those seeking able and engaging transportation, such people who complete that driving adventures can be had every day between home and work or on ordinarily mundane tasks. The Cooper is its own sunny day, but disregard your shades and produce welding specs along instead because the S produces enough excitement to the roads to stage the tarmac to tar-melting temperatures.

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