On Saturday 15th, I was followed for a short while by a new mini. It was red with a white roof. I do like the shape, but as he approached, I noticed the bonnet scoop to feed the supercharger.

Voila - Mini Cooper S.

It was on a non-descript X reg. plate, so I assume it's some kind of development mule/test-bed/shakedown car.

Shame we were in suburban traffic

Anyone else seen one? Anyone else remember spotting prototypes on the road? Only I remember walking along near my old home and hearing a glorious noise, turned round to watch Steve Cropley (of Autocar) drive by at the wheel of an Aston Martin DB7, followed by two others that they'd just been thrashing around in Wales - Before they were available to the public. Ooh, and spotted lots of X-type Jags with various disguises hanging around Redditch for some bizarre reason!

 

Yeah, seen lots of them around the Leamington area for the last 5-6 months.

 

Back in August saw new Range Rover on the M5 near Bristol. THe thing didnt have any disguising on it and was so much bigger than the outgoing model.

 

You may not want to play with one of those. 200bhp in a matchbox. Serious Scooby bashing potential.

P.

 

David

Ricard in Lemington had the contract to crash, heat, road test the mini b4 it was released. Somewhere around 80 were delivered to have the pants beaten out of them. Back in June I had a ride in a £1/2M of prototype mini. Supercharged to 215BHP which was nice . We had a run to the south side of Brum tootling along at 110MPH on the M42. You should of seen the stares we were getting, it was great.

Cheers

Neal

 

I certainly love the look of the new mini, inside & out. I'd certainly be very interested to see how they plan to put 155-200 bhp thru the front wheels and still provide a great handling car, that's still fun to drive.

 

I thought the final bhp figure was 163 for the Cooper S equating to about seven and a bit seconds for the 0-60 dash?

Starting to see loads of Minis on the road now - they do look good though.

 

I heard that while they've been tuned to 200bhp, the production model will be around the ~160bhp mark, although tuning company (Brabus or AMG, I forget) have already announced the 200bhp upgrade.