Want The Most Fun Mini Cooper S? Buy The Electric One

Admitting you like electric cars on the car-centric internet is a bit like strolling into a pub full of Chelsea fans wearing a Fulham shirt – it’s not going to end well for you. I do, though. For the majority of everyday, boring driving we have to do, EVs are just better. Cars designed expressly for having fun, though? I’m still very much team petrol and pistons – or I was until I spent some time with both the new Mini Cooper S and its EV counterpart, the Cooper SE.

Now, Mini would have you believe that the only difference between these cars is the powertrain, but it's not. The fourth-gen petrol Cooper is, underneath, little more than a tweaked version of the third-gen car – a very heavy facelift, if you will. The EV, meanwhile, is on an entirely different platform, co-developed by BMW and Chinese manufacturer Great Wall.

That said, they both look exactly the same from behind the wheel, and they both drive like Minis – that is to say, very well. Each has ultra-direct, talkative steering, a pointy nose and mobile rear end, and *sigh*... that go-kart feeling (I think I need a cold shower after writing that).

However, after driving both, it was the SE that put a bigger, dafter grin on my face. The things that make driving a good ICE car special aren’t there in the Cooper S. The engine, a 2.0-litre turbo four-pot making 201bhp, is… fine. It propels the car forward with plenty of gusto, but it never exactly stirs your soul. What soundtrack is there is a typically farty turbo-four rasp, and is pretty obviously being piped in – from the outside, it’s incredibly quiet.

The dealbreaker, though, is the total absence of a manual gearbox. I understand the business decisions behind not offering one, but if any car deserves three pedals in 2024, it’s a Cooper S. Previous generations have had some of the best ’boxes in the biz, and an H-pattern just suits a feisty little hatch like this.

What you get instead doesn’t offer much consolation. There’s no proper gear selector that you can use like a sequential ’box – just a little toggle switch to flip between P, R, N and D. The paddles, which you only get on the JCW-aping Sport trim, are underwhelming little plastic affairs tucked behind the wheel. They’re not very nice to use, and the seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox never really seems to know quite how to react when you pull them. It’s far better left to its own devices, at which point, you have to ask yourself: why bother?

Obviously, this is a non-issue in the SE, because it doesn’t have gears. What it does have is a big, instant wodge of torque that can be deployed with gleeful abandon, making the front end go all scrabbly and frisky. Floor it in the S, and there’s a hesitation as the engine and gearbox gird their collective loins, and that’s just not there in the SE.

Its instantaneous delivery is a better companion to the car’s darty, cheeky attitude, and you can still treat it like an old-school hot hatch, lifting off in the middle of a bend to make things go all loose at the back. Depending on what mode you’re in, you get a sort of sci-fi hum under acceleration. It’ll make the hardcore sceptics roll their eyes, but it’s hardly any more artificial than the piped-in sound on the S.

There’s really not much in it performance-wise. The SE has more power than the S – 215bhp plays 201 – but its 6.7-second 0-62mph sprint is a tenth slower, presumably due to extra weight. For what little relevance it has away from an autobahn or a racetrack, the SE’s top speed is as low as you expect from a small EV – 106mph – while the S will hit 150. In the real world, they feel pretty much as quick as one another, but the SE gives you a more instant whomp.

I’m not trying to say the SE is the better car in every regard. Obviously, if it’s your only car and you don’t have anywhere to charge at home, and you’re regularly doing more than the 200-odd miles you can hope to get out of a charge, then the S is the better bet. It’s a lot cheaper too, starting at £27,550 versus the SE’s £34,500 entry point. Of course, considerably cheaper than either is a previous-gen Cooper S with a manual. Just saying.

We’re not talking about price, range, or daily usability though. We’re talking about fun. And after driving both, I had more fun in the car you plug in than the one you pump full of liquid. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find something to barricade my door – there’s an angry mob here.