The Mini is a toy car that still bites

The car is populist modern art – I am sorry, reader, meet your plug-in Raphael – and a mirror of the driver’s soul. I am small and raging, and I love the Mini, because it is like me. I wonder if people used to feel this way about horses. Probably. The Mini is like a lot of British people apparently: we are over-represented in the small and raging. It’s the best-selling British car of all time and if it wasn’t in Bond – I mean

around Bond – it was in The Italian Job, which is both sexier – anyone can have Bond, Caine is slightly more detached – and more relatable. Looking at the Mini, here a convertible Cooper S exclusive, named for John Cooper of the Cooper Car Company of Surbiton, evokes the time when cars had identities. They couldn’t help it: their makers hadn’t learnt to disguise their souls in a medium black SUV with a trim called kill-me-now-I’m-done-with-you. You could be interesting in Surbiton, or anywhere.

It’s still the most stylish small car ever made – we cannot say best without casting our eyes to heaven in thanks for the Ford Fiesta – but I hate the VW Beetle for obvious reasons. Whimsy from Germany? Are you kidding me? Even their waltzes sound like punch-ups. It’s funny that Minis are from Oxford, home planet of British contempt. Not that students made it out to Plant Oxford in Cowley, which is a pilgrimage destination: Mini fans are the Trekkies of car world.

It’s also funny how much larger they are than Alec Issigonis’s original Mini: the Morris Mini-Minor of 1959. It really did look like a surprised box that was up for anything. You could talk a Mini into anything. It was like a gormless lover. If an early Mini had four passengers, it doubled in weight and went from 0-60 mph in 27.1 seconds, which I think is roughly the same rate of acceleration as a squirrel fleeing from a bear. The past is another country.

BMW bought the brand in 1994, and the cars looked more German and less weird: shout-out to the mesmerising Austin Mini pick-up of 1962, which looked like it was headed to Camberwick Green and was never coming back. Under responsible ownership, Mini diversified. We got the Convertible, the Countryman (an SUV), the Clubman (an estate), the Clubvan (self-explanatory), the Aceman (fully electric) a Roadster and two coupes. I’ve probably missed some out. This is a powerful convertible, and it beams with new car energy. Sometimes

I wonder if car critics learn the truth of what we drive, because the cars are always new: like Elizabeth II and fresh paint, we think the world looks like a scratch-free infotainment screen sitting under a roof that moves by button. More than any car I have driven, it feels like a toy, and it has all the charm of a toy. It is slightly like driving a bubble. It has a paradox though: it looks like a city car, being small, but it

drives like a country car. Clarkson is always going on about Minis that can fly, it’s like being a small car god – to be fair, he always seems to think this, it’s not the car, it’s him – or taking the kind of amphetamines that kill old people. The engine is 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol, the ride is firm rather than yielding, and the faster it goes, the better it drives. A real car, then. It just looks like a toy. Who is it for?

That is the question. It is not for the sensible, who will buy a Honda Jazz, the car that looks like a benevolent slave, or a VW Polo or Golf, because they don’t mind being the person who drives a VW Polo or Golf. (Cars make fools of us all. Cars have won). Nor is it for speed freaks who, in this price range, will accept they don’t have three friends, and buy a two-seat Mazda MX-5. The Mini is a car of its time.

Today it is for people who want to be different, but aren’t really: a beautiful piece of machinery, and a howl in the dark.

Mini convertible, Cooper S exclusive, John Cooper, 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol, BMW bought Mini in 1994, Morris Mini-Minor 1959, The Italian Job, Bond, Aceman fully electric, Clubman estate, Countryman SUV, Clubvan