Alternative review of MINI Convertible

Let's face it, I don't have a large family to cart about daily. My other half isn't even that big, so I don't really need a car with a whole lot of seats. Therefore something MINI-sized would suit me nicely and I'm a sucker for anything with a soft top. Once the MINI Convertible arrived at the office, I made sure I intercepted the driver, signed the forms and then surreptitiously sneaked the car to the end of the car park behind a Renault Master van. There was no way the boss was going to pull rank on me with this one, especially as it was Friday and the weather forecast for the weekend was uncharacteristically promising. Time to work on that tan.

Let's not get too hung up on the practicalities. This car is all about fun. The roof itself is a fully automatic fabric affair, MINI wisely choosing to reject the far more complex folding hard top fashion. Opting for this more complex engineering solution would not only have ruined the MINI's shape but also severely impinged on its luggage space. As it stands, the MINI retains a characteristic profile with the roof in place yet looks appealingly cheeky with the hood down. Press a button once and the roof slides back by 40cm, creating a sunroof effect. Press it again and the hood retracts fully, folding down behind the rear seats. Clever use of space means the luggage capacity of the MK2 car is considerably improved, at 125 litres roof-up, 170 litres roof-shut and 660 litres roof-up and rear seats folded. That's enough for a couple of squashy bags but if you're planning a week away, you're going to need to pack light, pack cheap or else, schedule a trip to the Laundromat.

The first thing that I would say about driving the MINI is that it is not a reproduction of Alec Issigonis's original dream, but more a synthetic repackaging. Unfortunately, the word synthetic fits pretty well - what at first looks like aluminium is in fact rather thin plastic. The speedometer, unmoved from its original central location, looks like a clock from a bargain homewares store and the steering wheel sat rather uncomfortably in my hands. Still, these things are cosmetic - I could learn to live with them. The Convertible MINI is fairly rigid but if you pop the lid off, it suddenly becomes a rather wobbly thing. The same applies to convertible cars when their hard tops are removed and a lot of work goes into remedial reinforcement work to rectify this. If you've ever wondered why soft top cars are often heavier than their tin top equivalents, now you know. MINI claim their Convertible offers the same go-kart style handling as the hatch and this is testament to thorough bracing. Weight has crept up and as a result acceleration is a little blunted compared to the hard top sibling but the Cooper S version will sprint to 60mph in a very reasonable 7.3 seconds.

I think I could live with MINI's Convertible even in a country where the sun shines as infrequently as Britain. It's not quite as sharp a driver's tool as its hard top siblings but that's a small sacrifice to pay.