2025 Mini Cooper S Convertible Stakes Out a Sunny Middle Ground

Do you want more vim than the standard Mini Cooper convertible but don’t want the almost-$45,000 John Cooper Works droptop to send you to the bread lines? The Mini Cooper S convertible might be the one for you. It’s got the right kind of gusto for a decent price, and considering how hard it is to find a ragtop from a nonluxury brand, Mini has the playground all to itself.What’s the Deal?The Cooper S has always stood as the base Cooper with an added dash of personality. In this case, that comes in the form of a turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-four making 201 horsepower and 221 pound-feet of torque, versus 161 horses and 184 twisties in the non-S. Front-wheel drive and a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic are mandatory on both.Mini claims the Cooper S convertible is good for a 6.7-second sprint to 60, but we reckon it’s a smidge quicker than that. We recently tested a Cooper S coupe and managed the same feat in 5.8 seconds, a full half-second quicker than Mini’s estimates. Extrapolation would put the S convertible somewhere in the low-six-second region, but we’ll confirm that once we schlep lil’ Coop to our test track.The convertible top retracts in two stages. First is like a sunroof, providing open-air driving for the front row. In the next step, it continues backward, nestling behind the rear seats after about 18 seconds, an action that can be performed at speeds up to 19 mph. But, like most convertibles, there are some tradeoffs to contend with. With the top down, you lose about half your rearward visibility. And the rear seats feel just as cramped as those in the hardtop. Your author would have to undergo a double amputation to sit behind his six-foot self. These seats are for short kings only.More on the Mini CooperYou can outfit the convertible top with a fun Union Jack print, but we don’t recommend that if you travel through South Boston often.At just 5.2 cubic feet, the Cooper S convertible’s cargo capacity is only about 58 percent of what the hardtop offers. However, you can maximize the amount of junk shoved back there with a clever two-stage trunk that lifts the entire roof assembly up a bit, providing a larger trunk opening.
Driving the Cooper S ConvertibleRead any of our old archive convertible reviews, and you’ll notice that droptops of a certain vintage were, in a word, godawful. Back then, the idea of additional chassis reinforcement was just a glint in some young worker’s eye, so you’d read all about discombobulated handling, vicious cowl shake—stuff that would send a modern automotive engineer to the rope-and-rafter store.Thankfully, decades of fancy book learnin’ have eliminated those tropes. The Mini Cooper S convertible is every bit as fun to drive as its fixed-roof brethren, perhaps more so if you like having your hair tousled. That said, we recommend dropping the top all the way every time; in its halfway-there, giant-sunroof position, the cabin replaces every sound wave with twice as much wind. Open the windows, and it gets louder. But with the top stowed fully and the side windows up, highway cruising is positively pleasant, with just a mild breeze creeping over the top of the windshield.The Cooper S four-pot is a delight. Devoid of synthesized notes even in Go-Kart mode, the engine is content to hang out in the background until you really glom on the accelerator. But even then, you get a mature little rumble, a hint of turbo whoosh, and not much else. It’s a good balance. We found no point on our routes around Savannah, Georgia, where the seven-speed DCT was caught with its pants down; it’s even further in the background than the engine is. It might be outside having a smoke. Which is fine, because you don’t get standard shift paddles to play with, so the transmission had best be as invisible as possible. Ride quality is closer to the base Cooper than the JCW, in part because the JCW’s standard adaptive dampers are only optional here. But the standard ride is still good. It has enough give to handle Savannah’s pockmarked parkways without asking for a filling or two in return, but it’s not soft and sloppy when chucked into a corner. In true Mini fashion, the Cooper S exhibits above-average torque steer. What should the average be? None. Honda played with some steering knuckles on the Civic Type R and figured out how to kill it. The Hyundai Elantra N, a less expensive creation, realized that a good differential goes a long way. Is crab-walking part and parcel with the Mini’s character? Not really. If anything, it’s frustrating when you’re constantly tracking wider than expected as the front end can’t figure out how to apportion the torque left to right. But if you know it’s always going to be there—and it is—you can adjust your line accordingly. Take the corner exit a little tighter, give it a little more gas, and let those poor, confused all-season tires put you back where you want to be. We also need to talk about parent company BMW’s obsession with steering-wheel rims seemingly inspired by the trunk of an oak tree. Grabbing the wheel feels like trying to get a hold of a kielbasa. Do those German engineers all have Dikembe Mutombo hands? Do they have hands at all? It’s one of the great mysteries of our time. Anyway, there’s a lot to love with the 2025 Mini Cooper S convertible. For starters, it’s the last front-wheel-drive convertible you can buy. Heck, convertibles overall are slowly fading away, these days relegated largely to high-dollar marques like Mercedes-Benz and Porsche. But if you do take the plunge on this here S, you’ll be rewarded with a perky driving character and a price that doesn’t drain the wallet as dramatically as its higher-output JCW sibling. At $38,375 before options, the BMW Group tax ain’t too bad on this one.SpecificationsSpecifications
2025 Mini Cooper S Convertible
Vehicle Type: front-engine, front-wheel-drive, 4-passenger, 2-door convertible
PRICE
Base: $38,375
ENGINE
turbocharged and intercooled DOHC 16-valve inline-4, aluminum block and head, direct fuel injection
Displacement: 122 in3, 1998 cm3
Power: 201 hp @ 5000 rpm
Torque: 221 lb-ft @ 1450 rpm
TRANSMISSION
7-speed dual-clutch automatic
DIMENSIONS
Wheelbase: 98.2 in
Length: 152.8 in
Width: 68.7 in
Height: 56.3 in
Passenger Volume, F/R: 49/28 ft3
CargoVolume: 5 ft3
Curb Weight (C/D est): 3150 lb
PERFORMANCE (C/D EST)
60 mph: 6.0 sec
1/4-Mile: 14.6 sec
Top Speed: 147 mph
EPA FUEL ECONOMY
Combined/City/Highway: 30/26/36 mpgCars are Andrew Krok’s jam, along with boysenberry. After graduating with a degree in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009, Andrew cut his teeth writing freelance magazine features, and now he has a decade of full-time review experience under his belt. A Chicagoan by birth, he has been a Detroit resident since 2015. Maybe one day he’ll do something about that half-finished engineering degree.
Source: caranddriver.com