2024 Mini Cooper S Review: In A Class Of Its Own (Literally)

Not that long ago, the Mini Cooper S didn’t have things so easy. Over the last few years though, nearly all its rivals – Ford Fiesta ST, Hyundai i20 N, Renaultsport Clio, Peugeot 208 GTi, Audi S1 – have sadly been shuffled off sale. Even the automotive zombie that was the Abarth 500 had its head removed and brain destroyed this year.

Where does that leave the little hot hatch market? You can still get a VW Polo GTI, but probably not for much longer, and this generation’s never been brilliant. Toyota GR Yaris? Fantastic car, but hard to get hold of new and altogether more specialised and expensive.

The fourth-gen Cooper S, then – codenamed F66 on this three-door version – has things almost all to itself. It uses the same B48 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder as the old car (on which it’s quite heavily based). It now pushes 201bhp and 221lb ft, up from 189bhp and 207lb ft in the old F56. This means it cracks 62mph in 6.6 seconds – two-tenths faster than its predecessor. Top speed is up from 146mph to 150mph.

These are the sort of marginal gains you expect between generations, but other changes aren’t so positive. Most glaringly, the manual Mini is dead.

I understand why. As manuals get less popular and harder to get through emissions tests, three pedals are increasingly tough for manufacturers to justify. That doesn’t make it any less of a wrench, though – modern Minis, right back to the 2001 original, have always offered super-slick manual gearchanges, playing into their fun-loving personalities. The absence of one here feels like quite a big part of the car’s soul has been thrown in a skip.

Instead, you get a seven-speed dual-clutch auto. Left alone, it’s a perfectly slick, smooth, functional ’box, and will indulge you by holding onto gears longer in the car’s sportiest settings. And leaving it alone is about all you can do, because on most Cooper Ss, there’s no way of taking control yourself.

Only if you select the Sport trim, which dresses the S up as a full-fat JCW, do you get paddles, and they feel like a bit of an afterthought. Dinky little items affixed to the back of the wheel, pulling them is hardly an event, and the ’box never seems to know how to react when you do. It feels, despite 2023’s manual-celebrating JCW 1to6 Edition, that Mini simply wants you to forget gears even exist.

The rest of the driving experience offers a lot more to like. The Cooper S still handles like a sports car disguised as a hatchback, with ultra-sharp, direct steering that gives you plenty of information about what the front wheels are up to.

Quite often, what they’re up to is scrabbling about, because the Cooper S is an entertainingly frisky thing at the front end. It’s the sort of behaviour we used to complain about in fast front-drive stuff, but increasingly miss as everything gets a bit smooth and sanitised.

It’s a quick car, a sensation amplified by its relatively tiny dimensions, and it still has that puppyish energy that eggs you on to go faster and faster. The engine gathers revs pretty quickly for a turbo mill, but plant the throttle and you have to wait on the gearbox a bit. You can solve this with Boost mode – essentially an overtaking button, you activate it by holding the left paddle, and it briefly puts the entire car in full toddler-on-a-sugar-rush mode so you can bang out overtakes.

It’s supremely chuckable, too, with a very darty nose, minimal body roll, and a surprisingly mobile rear end (lift off mid-corner at your peril). You do have to remember that because it’s essentially a BMW, it does come with a needlessly chunky steering wheel, but it’s not too detrimental to the experience – not as much as the gaping chasm where there used to be a gearknob, anyway.

The trade-off for all this handling excellence is a brutally firm ride. Seriously, this thing clatters through potholes and jostles you around on rough roads more aggressively than most modern sports cars. Whether it’s a byproduct of making it handle so well or a conscious effort to inject extra sportification isn’t clear, but regardless, it gets wearisome in day-to-day driving.

The piped-in parp from the engine is amusing enough, but won’t go down as an all-time classic. Its volume depends on what ‘Experience Mode’ you have the car set in – ‘Go Kart Mode’ (sigh) pulls all the usual sport mode tricks – sharper throttle, later shifts, more noise. Happily, it doesn’t force you to drive around a badly-ventilated warehouse in ill-fitting flameproof overalls.

Those Experience Modes also switch things up in the interior. You can find out more about the inside in our review of the electric Cooper SE, with which the petrol S shares an identical interior and exterior despite having totally different bones, and which I reckon is the more outright fun car to drive, much to the delight of Facebook.

In short, though, the inside looks great, feels solid and features some fun materials, but is marred by its busy, badly laid out circular touchscreen. All the usual complaints apply – there’s too much going on with it, and it’s not particularly intuitive to navigate. Thankfully, the S gets a standard head-up display, so you don’t constantly have to glance at the screen for things like speed and fuel level.

The rest of the interior is typically Mini-ish, for all the good and bad that that brings. You sit sports-car low, staring through a windscreen that gives you the impression of sitting in a giant motorbike helmet. The rear seats may as well be ornamental, but you do get ample headroom up front. You won’t get much more than a big shop in the boot.

Mini has streamlined the petrol Cooper range, so now, you just choose your engine – the S or the three-cylinder, 156bhp Cooper C – then choose from the fairly self-explanatory Classic, Exclusive or Sport appearance packs. Finally, you can add one of three levels of optional equipment (the S gets Level 1 thrown in as standard). A five-door and convertible will arrive soon, as will a properly hot JCW hatch, but for now, that’s your choice in terms of petrol cars.

For the S, that means pricing starts at £27,550 – that’s a Classic with no extra bits – and goes up to £35,550 for a fully-loaded Sport. Among the few rivals it has left, that’s pretty good. A Polo GTI starts at £30,195, and while it’ll be more practical, it won’t be anywhere near as entertaining to drive. Right now, there are still some new Anniversario edition Abarth 695s hanging around as dealer stock – they cost from about £28k, and will be more raw and raucous than the Mini, if slower and less dynamically polished.

If you’re after a small hot hatch for around the £30k mark, then, the Cooper S is the best of a very scant choice. If it did have more rivals, the areas where it lacks – no manual, punishing ride, messy infotainment – would be bigger sore points. As it is, though, it's still a bucket of fun, and we’re just happy Mini is keeping the faith.