Mini Cooper S 5-door 2019 long-term test

Other likes? There’s a feeling of tautness and robustness about the car’s general construction, something Minis have always had. The trim isn’t as luxurious as I’d like for £28k-plus, but it feels well mounted in the car and as if it’ll live a very long life.

Now onto the styling, and particularly side on. There’s no doubt that there’s a place for a 5dr Mini (other than the Mini Countryman), given that it makes up 45% of UK demand for the hatchback overall. That decreases slightly globally: in Mini’s Oxford plant, 3dr Minis make up 50% of numbers, followed by the Clubman at 30%, then the 5dr at 20%.

Yet I can’t imagine there’s anyone who prefers the 5dr’s styling to its traditional sibling. I get it: the design requirements to make the rear seats usable while still maintaining the Mini as we know it must have been onerous. Still, I wonder if it could have been done better. That said, its looks have genuinely grown on me, particularly in certain colours such as orange (Solaris) or Emerald Grey.

Are those extra doors worth it, then? Debatable, in my mind. Editor-in-chief Steve Cropley, who spent much time in this car, tells how he was “forced to eat humble pie” when his 6ft 2in son was able to sit easily in the Mini’s rear behind a person of decent height.

My tales aren’t quite so positive. My four-year-old niece climbed into the back and quickly announced “This car is very small”, while touching the roof. A 6ft 2in friend visited with her two children, aged 12 and nine, and I felt a little sheepish squashing them all in the back. It was a short journey so absolutely fine, but it didn’t feel like one that would have been comfortable beyond a few miles.

The design of the dashboard and central console aren’t to my fancy, either. The central dinnerplate infotainment screen is a bit naff, although at least it’s quirky. It likely falls into a similar category of ‘Marmite’ as the Union flag taillights. The storage in the front is also poor and awkward to use.

It’s not all bad, though: the BMW rotary dial to control infotainment is the best in the business for intuitive use. Ultimately, it’d be great to see a simpler treatment for the overall front cabin design, one where Mini maintains its quirks but with a creation demonstrating more design wit.

And finally, there’s the price. When I consider the brand appeal and the excellent engineering, it doesn’t seem crazy-expensive. But, then again, a standard Volkswagen Golf GTI (now off sale until the next generation arrives) was a similar price and promised driving enjoyment and far better practicality. The full-blown Mini JCW (3dr only) also starts from just over £26k, which begs the question.

In summary, then: it’s a tad pricey and not as practical as you’d hope for a 5dr. But it’s also satisfyingly compact, has great brand appeal and is a hoot to drive.

Second Opinion

Back in 2000, I was one of the sceptics who didn’t think BMW’s ‘new Mini’ concept would work. Of course, it has, and brilliantly, and this terrific Cooper S we’ve been running is one of the very best to date. It’s sporty, fast and agile, yet comfortable over long distances. Giving it back is a bad business.

Steve Cropley

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Love it:

infotainment controller BMW’s rotary dial is just so intuitive to use. I’d choose it over most other alternatives.

fun factor It’s a brilliantly fun thing to drive, especially around country roads.

simplicity No fancy driving assistance systems or boot-opening button, plus there’s a proper handbrake.

Loathe it:

oddment storage Front storage is utterly useless for almost anything apart from keys or hair bands.

Not a bright idea Rainbow-coloured light encircling the screen. Thankfully, it can be turned off.

Final mileage: 8871

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Life with a Mini 5-door hatch: Month 4

ICE to see you again - 11th September 2019

In the wake of a short preview drive in an early Mini Electric, it has been interesting to spend time in our Cooper S. Their similarities outweigh the differences, in how they both offer handling verve and accelerative pep. But while the EV’s quiet cruising impressed, there’s much to be said for the pleasing audio of our car’s 2.0-litre engine.

Mileage: 7481

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Okay to borrow the Mini? You can have it back in 1000 miles… - 17th July 2019

It’s unusual for those in the road testing racket to drive just one car for 10 straight days, but that’s the 1000-mile partnership that recently developed between me and our long-term Mini Cooper S Sport five-door – for two reasons.

First, I enjoyed the car so much on first acquaintance that I wanted more. Second, its normal custodian, Rachel Burgess, was out of the country so I was presented with a golden opportunity to swipe it from the car park.

Early obsessions often lead to disappointment, but not this time. My liking for the Mini’s defining characteristics (compactness, agility, sportiness, great seats, low driving position) soon gave way to an appreciation of its finer points, particularly the torque and throttle response of the 189bhp 2.0-litre engine, the quick steering and the ultra-firm ride, all of which seemed ideal for this car’s purpose.

Our S Sport has Mini’s £600 optional adaptive suspension, which even in Normal, on standard 17in Pirellis, is probably taut enough to deter many a comfort-oriented potential owner. But to me, this is a naturally sporty car, flat riding and compliant enough but with very good body control. Even in its Sport mode, the ride is just about tolerable on the road, although it does get pretty surface sensitive, and makes you think about taking it to an autosolo or punting it up a hillclimb.

The S Sport’s 17in Pirellis seem so right for the job (road noise, although variable, is generally okay) that I’d agonise about going for the optional 18s that many owners would specify. My concern is that bigger hoops might hurt the ride comfort and amplify the road noise. As it stands, our car is already much more agile than most cars it meets while generating road noise that’s well enough contained to allow 200-mile hops to be relaxed and easy. What a shame to sacrifice such things for looks and slightly sharper steering.

So much have I enjoyed this Mini that I’ve spent repeated sessions on the mini.co.uk configurator, deciding my ideal spec. Despite protests from convenience-minded readers, I continue to dislike the five-door body’s looks and the way its centre pillar impedes easy access for drivers of a fuller figure. I feel further licensed to dislike it having recently learned that the extra doors add 150mm to the overall length and 55kg to the kerb weight. But then I never need to carry young children in the back as some owners do, for which they say it’s ideal. And selling plenty of five-doors (45% of volume) adds to the Oxford plant’s viability, a boon at times like these.

Were I buying a Mini for myself, I’d find it hard to resist the top-end John Cooper Works’ 228bhp iteration of the 2.0-litre turbo engine that powers our S Sport (which already has JCW seats and suspension). But I suspect laBurge has made the right choice: the S engine has a near-perfect mix of power and docility, and all you really get for your extra £2000 is a 0.6sec-quicker 0-62mph time (6.9sec against 6.3sec) – hardly a wise investment.

Mini trips will henceforth be rarer for me now that this excellent little car’s custodian has returned and must be looking forward to effortlessly sprinting about in her Mini. But such is my newly formed relationship with this car that I’ll keep trying to nab it whenever she’s looking the other way.

Steve Cropley

Love it:

Handling Its combo of stability, grip, great steering and a ride quality that’s taut yet avoids (much) crashing makes it really something to love.

Loathe it:

5dr styling If I were a car designer, I’d definitely start again with this one. Side on, it reminds me of a section of railway carriage.

Mileage: 6000

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Life with a Mini 5-door hatch: Month 3

Light up my life - 26th June 2019

A feature of the interior is the centre console’s circular screen complete with illuminated LED ring. It lights up in various colours depending on engine speed, drive mode and ambient light – while the tachometer goes from orange to red as its nears the redline. I find it distracting, while some colleagues think it’s a welcome addition. For those on my side of the fence, there is an off switch…

Mileage: 4573

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A new, temporary custodian takes the opportunity to make up for lost time - 12th June 2019

It’s been a dream ticket for me, having the chance to do 1000 miles in our five-door Mini Cooper S while its usual custodian, Rachel Burgess, is busy looking after our new Bentley Continental GT.

For no particular reason, I’ve never spent much time in BMW Minis, but when the opportunity has come up, I’ve usually liked what I’ve found. In particular, I love the way Mini’s latter-day custodians have continued to make the cars so enduringly special.

The way you sit in a Mini – down there among the wheels with your bum practically on the floor as you look past the weirdly fat and upright screen pillars – is special in its own right. The little car’s combination of squatness, a wheel at each corner, quick and friendly steering and grippy tyres makes you want to Hopkirk-flick this ultra-stable little roller skate into every traffic-free bend, almost from the off.

But I guess that’s the case for most Minis. Rachel’s is special in two ways. It’s a five-door and it’s a Cooper S Sport (thus coming with meaty 189bhp four-pot engine and sportiest John Cooper Works suspension). The five-door part I get, without warming to it. A current rule of car selling in the UK seems to be that three-door models are hard to shift, which is why Mini’s engineers bothered to lever a pair of rear doors into a previously good-looking little brick-shaped body.

The five-door works – 45% of buyers choose it – but I hope you’ll excuse me if I say I hate it. Looks to me like a section of a railway carriage. And when you adjust the front bucket seat for my kind of comfort, there’s only leg room for a three-year-old behind you anyway. But people choose them for good reason so time to shut up.

The Cooper S’s 2.0-litre four is a big engine for a small car and it really tells in the abundant torque. This car will pull smoothly and strongly in high gears from well under 2000rpm. There’s a nice rasp from the exhaust, which gives it a persona. Use the engine hard and the S goes really well. Not quite Ford Fiesta ST territory, but close. Drift along and you’ll hardly hear a thing. It’s easy to forget to pull the long-legged sixth, especially since the gearbox action is decent rather than great.

Other issues? That dinner-plate central display has always struck me as a bit forced, but it works well enough if you take the trouble to understand its nuances – helped by a BMW iDrive panel low down on the console. But I can’t help wondering what kind of fascia BMW’s designers might have created had they not been required to recognise rather slavishly the round central speedo of Sir Alec Issigonis’s original Mini. Still, the existing treatment works well. It’s distinctive and, as I kept being told during my tenure, it’s also ‘youthful’.

The big win for me in this Cooper S is the distinctly sporty character of the JCW suspension, which comes as part of the Sport pack. Set up this way, the Mini is very firmly damped and admirably resists roll when you succumb to the irresistible urge of chucking it into enticing bends, yet it rides flat and classily absorbs bumps you might have expected to create an uncomfortable impact.

Were I specifying a Mini of my own (something I now reckon I’d enjoy), there are plenty of influences I’d take from this car. The dark blue colour, the Sport pack – with that excellent suspension – and the Cooper S engine would all be high on my list. Chief hope now is that la Burge won’t want her great little car back too soon.

Love it:

Strong heart Mini’s BMW-made 2.0-litre turbo four is impressive for power but best of all for its ultra-wide torque spread.

Loathe it:

Too many doors Five-door model is a marketing expedient, but there’s no point in pretending that it can rival the cheeky three-door for looks. 

Mileage: 4277

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Life with a Mini 5-door hatch: Month 2

A better combination to see on your drive? - 22nd May 2019

Seeing the similarly toned Mini Cooper S and Jaguar I-Pace on my parents’ drive recently had me wondering: is this the two-car dream garage of the future? As electric range and infrastructure increases, a battery-powered SUV like the I-Pace could be the main family car, while the Mini is a fun, nippy, semi-practical hot hatch offering pure driving pleasure. An ideal combo.

Mileage: 3200

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To a country manor in our S-Class would’ve been too obvious - 8th May 2019

When you go for the optional stiffer suspension – as we did for our Mini Cooper S long-termer – there’s always a pay-off.

Living on a narrow London street with multiple speed bumps means I experience that pay-off every day. Of course, as with most things, it becomes less galling over time, plus you become an expert at how best to approach/avoid the bumps at all costs. One thing’s certain – go a fraction over 20mph on any of these (even if it’s a 30mph zone) and you’ll noisily hit the bump stops.

That’s the downside of choosing the Sport trim, one of three options, and the one that comes with black alloys, rear spoiler, aero kit and optional no-cost sports suspension. But for every downside in life, there’s an upside. In this case, it’s a supremely capable car on the roads where it matters most for a hot hatch owner – the windy, quiet, rural ones. More of that later.

But first, motorway runs. I did a long drive up to deepest, darkest Cheshire recently, on which I mused how I was still on the M40 and not even yet at Birmingham, let alone Stoke. I thought I might get fidgety in a smallish car – especially with bucket seats, which I often find too claustrophobic for relaxed driving – but joyfully, I did not. Nor did I find myself desperately needing to get out of the car and relieve myself of that well-known driver’s woe, numb bum.

While on a slow stretch of the M6, an over-the-air update warned me there was a broken-down vehicle in the left lane. And there was. It’s the first time an OTA update has been genuinely useful to me – making me aware of something ahead, rather than leaving me to wonder what the hold-up is.

And, of course, the car has the power to accelerate quickly on motorways, hitting 0-62mph in 6.9sec. The only major criticism at motorway speeds is road noise, which grates after a while but I suspect is a trait that Mini owners are willing to forgive.

Second, the fun stuff. Once off the M6, there was plenty of chance to test the joie de vivre of the Cooper S. I’ve long been a fan of hot hatches, where the power and dynamics seem so well-judged to rural roads, as opposed to supercars, which can rarely be enjoyed in all their glory.

Mini harps on about the ‘go-kart feel’ of its models, but it has a point. What’s so charming about the Cooper S is how solid and direct it feels turning enthusiastically into a corner. There’s never any doubt that the Mini can handle it, and come out the other side just as chipper. It’s this sweet spot that is really the reason to buy a Cooper S Sport.

My final destination was Peckforton Castle (pictured). No doubt its owner is used to arriving in something more regal than my Mini, but I bet they don’t have half as much fun along the way.

Love it:

Having a blast ’Twas a happy Sunday afternoon chucking this around empty rural roads.

Loathe it:

Noise annoys Motorway road noise irritates on longer journeys. Radio volume up…

Mileage: 3084

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Life with a Mini 5-door hatch: Month 1

It’s not what you think it is - 17th April 2018

People that aren’t car fans but who have car knowledge are often confused by the Mini five-door. When I say I’m driving the five-door Cooper S, they reply: “Oh, the Countryman?” Many aren’t aware the five-door hatch is a thing, instead thinking the Countryman is Mini’s five-door car. Some more marketing on this model wouldn’t go amiss.

Mileage: 2450

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We took the Oxford factory tour, and came away with a new addition to our fleet - 10th April 2018

When Mini introduced its 5dr hatch in 2013, it had wised up to a growing trend: the general demise of three-door hatches in favour of five doors.

The Mini, of course, is a special case given the iconic status of the 3dr hatch, and so the two run happily alongside each other in the line-up. Currently, the UK mix is 55/45 in favour of the 3dr.

Both of these models have the added novelty of being made in the UK. Given that more than 85% of cars sold in Britain are imported, running one that’s made, more or less, down the road gave us the perfect opportunity to do the unusual and pick up our finished car, a Mini 5dr Hatch Cooper S Sport, from the factory in which it was built.

Your average Mini buyer wouldn’t be so lucky: there’s no special treatment for Mini owners at the brand’s Cowley plant in Oxford, but anyone can do a tour for £19 a pop – and, indeed, they do. Last year, 25,000 visitors took the factory tour.

Our Mini is a 5dr Cooper S in Starlight Blue with black contrast. It took between 26 to 28 hours to build, typical of every Mini at the plant, which is the equivalent size of 94 football pitches. Around 1000 cars are made here every day.

On all parts of the production line, 5dr siblings to our car sit alongside the three-door hatch and Clubman, in any order. They are mostly 3dr Minis, which make up 50% of the numbers at Cowley, followed by the Clubman at 30%, then the 5dr at 20%. From later this year, the electric Mini will be built here, too.

In the early stages of our tour, we pass the stage where cars are stamped with a vehicle identification number. One is done every 60 seconds. I discover that the VIN of our long-termer was stamped at 3.22pm on 9 November 2018. (Yes, we took a long time to pick up the car.)

Further down the line, we watch a host of robots in action fitting sections of the body. Production manager Alex McKenzie tells me there are 19 cameras aimed at each door, measuring accuracy to a tolerance equal to half the width of a human hair.

He adds that the chrome headlights and bar are the hardest parts to achieve a high quality fit. “It is mainly things that are distinctive to the Mini that are difficult. We’ve got really tight tolerances for such an iconic car,” McKenzie says. “The Clubman is the hardest of the three models built here because it has more panels. But they are difficult cars to build generally when you consider what a small package they are.”

Almost two-thirds of finished cars depart on two daily trains that run through the site, while the rest go by transporter. Ours is the exception. We take some photographs of the car in the heart of the site, which dates back to 1913, before getting on our way.

We’ve run a Clubman in the past couple of years, but this is our first long-term test of the 5dr model. We want to gauge the practicality of the 5dr hatch, which is 16cm longer than its 3dr counterpart and with 30% more luggage space. Would we buy this or an Audi A1 Sportback?

Our test car is the facelifted model, launched early last year. The best way to tell the difference from the previous car are the rear lights, which now feature a Union Flag design.

Of course, we’ve gone for the most fun model, the range-topping Cooper S, which accounts for one-fifth of 5dr hatch sales in the UK. The Cooper S uses a 189bhp 2.0-litre fourcylinder engine that delivers 207lb ft of torque and achieves 0-62mph in 6.9sec – 1.4sec faster than the mid-range Cooper.

Late last year, Mini overhauled its trim structure to make it more straightforward for buyers. There are now three levels: Classic, Sport and Exclusive. We’ve opted for Sport, which adds a series of John Cooper Works features, including a bodykit, sports suspension and bucket seats.

There are three equipment packs available on all Minis, covering driving assistance systems, comfort and navigation. We have the Navigation Plus Pack (£2000) and Comfort Pack (£900). Navigation Plus includes sat-nav, Bluetooth, realtime traffic information and a host of connectivity services such as overthe-air updates. The Comfort Pack features rear parking sensors, front heated seats, an armrest and more.

After those packs, we’ve gone for the adaptive suspension (£600), black interior trim (£160), head-up display (£500) and Starlight Blue exterior paint (£525). That all adds up to a not-insubstantial price of £28,050.

Going from my most recent long-termer, a Volvo XC40, to a Mini 5dr Cooper S was a stark contrast. The XC40’s purpose is to be comfortable and practical, whereas the Cooper S hankers after a dose of that, plus a little extra. It’s early days, but already the Mini’s sporty handling has put a smile on my face. But will it stay there?

Second Opinion

A practical Mini? Three words that, written down, don’t make much sense, but which the evidence suggests is possible, because five doors and compact packaging mean this really is a car a young family could realistically live with. I only wish that the multitude of buttons and dials weren’t such an assault on the senses, as they make it feel cluttered, even if it isn’t.

Jim Holder

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Mini 5-door Cooper S Sport prices & specifications

Prices: List price new £23,365 List price now £23,875 Price as tested £28,050 Dealer value now £16,940 Private value now £15,625 Trade value now £14,545 (part exchange)

Options:Adaptive suspension £600, black interior trim £160, head-up display £500, Starlight Blue exterior paint £525, Navigation Plus pack £2000, Comfort pack £900

Fuel consumption and range: Claimed economy 42.8mpg (WLTP) Fuel tank 44 litres Test average 37.8mpg Test best 39.2mpg Test worst 32.5mpg Real-world range 366 miles

Tech highlights: 0-62mph 6.9sec Top speed 146mph Engine 4 cyls, 1998cc, turbocharged, petrol Max power 189bhp at 4700rpm Max torque 207lb ft at 1250rpm Transmission 6-spd manual Boot capacity 378 litres Wheels 17in, alloy Tyres 205/45 R17 Kerb weight 1330kg

Service and running costs: Contract hire rate £331.68 CO2 165g/km (WLTP) Service costs None Other costs None Fuel costs £1276.60 Running costs inc fuel £1276.60 Cost per mile 15 pence Depreciation £9350 Cost per mile inc dep’n £1.00 Faults None