Mini is the max: the miniscule car delivers peak driving pleasure

MINIATURIZATION is a good measure of how much technology and expertise have advanced, gauged by how much something can deliver in terms of capability and performance, while reducing its size to the bare minimum.

The Mini has always been the poster car of that philosophy, and has been no less than iconic in terms of what it has evolved to, from its official outing (as the Austin Mini) in 1961 to its “all-new” iteration over half a century later, in 2013.

Though the Mini has grown quite a bit in terms of its actual dimensions and model variations, it remains the car to beat when it comes to the size-performance ratio.

Simply put, it’s the smallest car that’s the most fun to drive. And recently, we discovered that Mini takes fun quite seriously.

Mini Hopping 2015

So why take a fleet of cars of British pedigree that takes advantage of German technology on some laid-back Indonesian island topography, specifically on the coastal roads of Lombok?

 Well, oddly enough, driving the first 20 kilometers of the over 400-km  course for a couple of days cleared up that question.

Our quick and feisty convoy was made up of the three most potent new models in the Mini lineup: the Mini Cooper S five-door, the Mini Cooper S three-door, and the firecracker of a ride, the Mini John Cooper Works Hatch.

All three are powered by 1,998-cc four-cylinder engines with Mini Twin Turbo Power Technology, in varying power outputs. All capable of going very fast, very quickly.

But the clincher was the challenge prepared for us: to slice, dice and circumnavigate the beautiful Lombok in our magnificent Minis.

The roads were tight even by Manila standards and configured on the “wrong side” for us Filipinos in the media contingent.

We had to merrily blast through the roads—on some parts, dodge slow-moving ox carts and neurotic motorbikers darting in and out of lanes (just like home!)—on our right-hand-driven Minis.

That’d be challenging enough for even the most seasoned drivers, especially since the coastal roads generously undulated and hugged the coastal hillsides, had some abrupt dips that ended in tight curves, with seemingly endless sweeping turns that alternated between nicely paved asphalt and loose dirt, and blind corners that opened up to glorious tropical vistas that could certainly momentarily distract even the most hardcore rally-fanboy from his driving….

Oh, it was just the emerald waters glistening under the island sun, with the silhouettes of fishing nets suspended on stilts (postcard material for your smartphones), that made us crane our necks to look again until we lost sight of them. Oh no.

If Mini Hopping 2015 (as they coined it) is all about sight-seeing in this manner, I’m so buying into it.

Fun ‘distractions’

In a test drive, which one is being tested—the car or the driver?

If a car’s interior makes you marvel at its details while hightailing at an 85-kph speeding convoy, that says a lot. In the interest of safety, you shouldn’t.

But if the Mini John Cooper Work’s huge dinner plate-size main dial smack at the center of the dashboard, along with those chunky toggle switches and controls for everything, the carbon fiber trim and snug leather appointment, doesn’t merit your appreciation,  well…

There was a lot to take in during the drive all over Lombok—the beautiful scenery, the delightfully sneaky route, the fast pace we were taking, and the sublime turn-on-a-dime handling of the Mini.

We did take turns on driving duties, so everyone got to drive every model and variant. And all handled very similarly—with impressive acceleration and speed.

But we were all gunning for more seat time with the Mini John Cooper Works Hatch.

With basically the same 1,998-cc four-cylinder gasoline engine with Mini Power Turbo Technology as the Mini Cooper S, the Mini JCW Hatch is specially tuned to have almost 40 horsepower more at 231 and about 40 Newton-meters more at 320 over the MINI Cooper S’s 192 HP and 280 Nm of torque, helping it propel from zero to 100 kph in just 6.1 seconds.

It’s not just about the numbers, though, as every aspect of it—the sports suspension, special exhaust system, Brembo codesigned sports brake system, and the 18-inch JCW light-alloy wheels—works in harmony to reward the lucky bloke in the driver’s seat with exhilarating race-inspired performance in a car that’s dripping with substance and character, not to mention as photogenic as an A-list celebrity.

The Mini test drive in Lombok, in my view, was mainly to find out how a fairly enthusiastic driver would react and fare in specific conditions: a scenic-but-challenging route, unfamiliar territory and driving configuration, and a car that constantly eggs him to just have fun.

The Mini was originally designed to have its four wheels positioned as far out, close to its body’s four corners, to give it that very agile signature go-kart handling characteristic.

It’s been retained of course, with the benefit of cutting-edge engineering  technology, to make that handling characteristic even more surgically precise; a mere twitch of an input on its tight steering, even at speed, is enough to make it comply faithfully to a path you’ve predetermined, as if you’ve drawn a guide line on the road.

As motoring journalists, we have to maintain a certain degree of objectivity and be mostly analytical while driving.

I was, to a certain point, until I found that the car was giving me an added buffer of confidence to push my driving a little further, and until I realized I was laughing out loud while carving the curves, alternating climbs, dips and switchbacks.

In hindsight, I think I was being tested by the Mini. And it probably (and hopefully) gave me a good evaluation: for not being a stiff and for giving in to the desired effect of what they’ve been working hard on all along—the exacting performance and safety specs, the heritage, packaging, styling and design cues, all that research and development—on that drive at least, making a motoring journalist like myself chuck the evaluation sheet out of  the window, and just have a ton of fun driving.