Mini Cooper S - long-term review

“Most cars are like driving around in big phones these days.”

I hear a variation of that comment most weeks. Usually, from someone baffled by a touchscreen. Carmakers love to boast their latest interior design inspiration has come from the reductionist minimalism of a touchscreen tablet. Because who wouldn’t want the inside of their second-most expensive lifetime purchase to remind them of ordering some limp fries in McDonald’s?

Thing is, when you live with a Mini, it’s not just like driving around in a phone. Your phone is also watching how you drive. And writing it all down to report back later.

A notification pinged onto my phone after the Cooper S had been in my life for a month. It cheerily told me my latest monthly driving report had been compiled and was ready for viewing in the Mini app. Oh, goodie.

It was the Mini equivalent of Spotify Wrapped, showing me a ‘heat map’ of my drive destinations over the past month, and not just how economically I’ve driven, but how I rank in the worldwide community of Mini Cooper S drivers. Over the following months I’ve become a teeny bit obsessed with what it’s keeping tabs on, as the reports pile up.

Wow, it’s detailed. The ‘Efficiency Statistics’ alert me that my average journey time in September 2024 was 49 minutes, and across that month the Mini’s 2.0-litre engine burned 75.3 litres of fuel. That’s a 3% rise in fuel use versus August. The app gets all red and angry with me. The shame!

This equates, the tut-tut app explains, to the Cooper S’s engine coughing out 175.5kg of CO2 across September. Blimey. I hadn’t been that busy, had I?

The app reassures me my average September fuel consumption of 43.8 miles per gallon makes me more efficient than 76 per cent of other Mini Cooper S drivers it has contributing to the hive mind.

Phew. I’m not a planet killer. I’m one of the good guys, a part of the solution not the problem. Hurrah for the long seventh gear keeping the revs low at a motorway cruise. Well done the coasting function eking out those downhill stretches of motorway in the early part of my commute.

My CO2 output is apparently in the top 24 per cent of other Mini Cooper S drivers. But I did more miles than 52 per cent of people with the same car, so that explains it away. A bit.

But how can I be top of the class for fuel consumption and yet a villain for emissions? The app doesn’t explain. It simply tells me my Mini and I are a ‘unique duo’ and to check in same time next month. It’ll be watching, of course.