Mini makes one of the few affordable cabrios still on sale. Where else to celebrate than on a frozen Swedish lake?
It has become a little tricky to drive topless in Britain.
You needn’t flick too far back in the Autocar archive to find price lists awash with cheap convertible cars, many of them spun from humble hatchback origins and sporting an SLK-lite folding hard-top. While we rarely lavished them with unmitigated praise – cohesive styling and chassis rigidity weren’t always strong suits of this particular sub-genre – hindsight suggests we should have appreciated these cars a little more.
The affordable cabrio market came and went as the ‘Juke effect’ lifted most of their owners several inches further from the ground and into crossovers that allowed the sun to beam in from above via a panoramic glass roof.
Two manufacturers stuck firmly to their beliefs, though, and you can still buy a pair of delightfully familiar drop-tops for less than £30,000 (or £300 per month). The Mazda MX-5 has remained steadfastly on sale through four generations since the late 1980s, and it can take a lot of credit for the sudden influx of cheap cabrios and roadsters that followed its launch.
Just £28,585 nabs you an entry-level 130bhp 1.5-litre Prime-Line – a price that sits significantly below its original baseline once inflation has been applied. A bargain, then.
The new-age BMW Mini has been sold in folding soft-top form since 2004, and it too has reached its fourth generation. Just £28,955 slots you neatly into a 161bhp Cooper C, its larger-lunged 2.0-litre turbo engine, cosy back seats and bigger boot lending it more flexibility than the little Mazda, although its front-drive layout and auto-only transmission ensure it’s not a patch on the MX-5 as a driver’s car.
Nevertheless, Minis have always punched well above their modest weight when it comes to entertainment. Another three grand gets you a 201bhp Cooper S like the one you see here. Still no manual gearstick, nor even paddles to influence its dual-clutch ‘box (at least not without an options pack upgrade), but today I should be kept busy enough without. Its standard tyres have been swapped for studded Nokian Hakkapeliittas and the stage is set for a day of driving like few I’ve experienced before.
The difficulty of buying a brand-new drop-top poses all the incentive I need to fold back the fabric hood of this Mini Convertible the moment I’m handed its key and not whirr it back until the day is out. Further motivation is beamed from the ‘Always Open Timer’ on its vibrant circular touchscreen, which claims the roof has been down for almost 22 hours since the car first rolled out of the factory.
We had better click that over to a full day, then, regardless of the temperature in deepest Scandinavia loitering around -16deg C. The skies are cloudy, but luckily it’s dry and there’s only an occasional, light dusting of snow to speckle the Mini’s interior. Thermals on, coat zipped up and woolly hat pulled low, it’s time for an unlikely adventure to celebrate the fact Mini still makes these things.
The Mini is also a fully British affair again. Production of this fourth-generation Convertible returned to Plant Oxford after a decade’s hiatus, while the four-cylinder ‘B48’ engine up front is pieced together at Hams Hall in Birmingham and BMW Group Plant Swindon supplies its body panels and sub-assemblies.
We’re an awfully long way from those factory lines now, mind you. We’ve landed in Trondheim, Norway, to drive two hours east to Áre, a Swedish town famous for skiing, mountain biking and ice driving. Plenty of companies run joyful days of skidding around on the area’s frozen lakes, whether in well-used Toyota GT86s or the classic Tuthill 911s of Below Zero, and our day will close with a little taster of the fun.
With a few fistfuls of luck we’ll be greeted by the aurora borealis – the Mini Convertible presents a perfectly open viewing canopy for seizing any opportunity of a sighting.
The drive looks fairly innocuous on a map -you turn right out of the airport, subtly cross a border then sit on the E14 until the glowing bars of Are heave into view. The road gently wends its way through scenery that appears frozen solid, the Cooper S taking it all in its stride on those foolproof-feeling studs – until WOAH!, an urgent, cold-blooded stamp of the brake pedal and a swing left of the Mini’s steering wheel to avoid an errant moose that’s chosen now, of all moments, to wander blindly into the road.
The ‘elk test’ was given its 15 minutes of infamy by the first-gen Mercedes-Benz A-Class, but I’d never imagined experiencing it in real life. Thankfully, the tenacity of those tyres – plus the innate balance of the Mini – makes mincemeat of such tests, whether staged or otherwise.
Even with studded rubber and the loss of a fixed metal roof, the core agility we have always adored in Minis hasn’t been lost: its steering is quick-witted and the rear axle always gleefully follows behind. The more potent Cooper S and JCW drop-tops enjoy a bit of extra chassis bracing, and the end result feels delightfully close to the S hatch that road tester Illya Verpraet enjoyed so much. He praised the low-slung, BMW-like driving position, one that only feels boosted by the loss of B-pillars and more expansive visibility.
My only qualm with the way this car drives is (inevitably) the lack of manual control over its seven-speed transmission. But the car’s own mapping is pretty good, and you can nicely edit its Go-Kart driving mode to mix and match the throttle, steering and DSC mapping to mould a car with a more eager shift pattern, a cleaner steering response and a less studious eye on your mischief. It’s a perfectly natural car in which to start unwinding the stability control, although I’ll reserve ‘DSC Off’ for the frozen lake…
The rest of the car has a surprising assuredness to it. These are grown-up things beneath the jovial interior design, with a good smattering of mature BMW tech woven among the extravagant circles. Mostly, I’m thankful for its three levels of heat for the front seats and steering wheel.
Driving roof-down in the biting cold gathers a lot of stares and the occasional hooted horn once we roll into downtown Åre, but I won’t let the attention stop me. And while its turbo four isn’t the most rousing of engines in most circumstances, its role too perfunctory for a car with sporting intentions, it doesn’t half blare nicely in the sub-zero air.
The Mk4, F67 Mini Convertible is actually a heavily updated Mk3 – hands up if you remember the Volkswagen Golf Cabriolet doing similar in the late ’90s. The fact is evidenced by old-gen tail-lights that don’t tally with the latest Mini hatch; its F57 predecessor was actually launched a year after the ND-gen MX-5 that remains on sale.
It poses the question: wouldn’t we rather have two gently evolved soft-tops to choose from rather than none at all? We meander through an innocuous barrier onto Äresjön lake with a joyful little circuit laid out ready on the ice. It’s a chance to explore all the handling hilarity that was hinted at on the road amid a safer expanse of space.
Turning off the DSC makes it an easier thing to get moving from a standstill: its scrabble for grip is reminiscent of a Cooper S on the mildly damp roads of home, and the car feels no liability in the turns with the aids extinguished. It’s a doddle to initiate the lift-off oversteer BMW Minis have typically revelled in, and the ensuing slide can be gathered up quickly with an opposing flick of your wrists or kept going with surprising ease on the throttle. Just mind the snow spray if you’ve dropped all four windows down…
This is outright frivolity rather than anything resembling consumer advice, I’m only too aware, but it’s nice to know the Monte spirit still lives and breathes beneath a 1.4-tonne Convertible. This is a proper Mini, roofless or not, and proof that one of the last affordable drop-tops left on British price lists is recommendable for its talents and not just the mere scarcity of its offering.
Less promising is the sky, where thick cloud and a riotous blizzard have rolled in when we had hoped to see flashes of green and pink swirl above us. Time to roll the roof back up and relinquish the keys, then the bright teal -backlighting of the fabric dash teasing us with a glimpse of the dazzling show we could have had. Mischievous as ever, this Mini Convertible. Let’s hope it stays that way for a long time yet.
Mini Cooper S convertible
Price
£31,990 (£33,790 as tested)
Engine
4 cyls in line, 1998cc, turbocharged, petrol
Power
201bhp at 5000-6500rpm
Torque
221lb ft at 1450-5000rpm
Gearbox
7-spd dual-clutch automatic, FWD
Kerb weight
1455kg
0-62mph
6.9sec
Top speed
147mph
Economy
42.8mpg
CO2, tax band
149g/km, 35%
