MINI Carbon Edition 2016 Review

MINI Carbon Edition
Road Test

Extra power, electronically-damped suspension, JCW looks and the most vocal exhaust this side of a Ferrari mark the five-door Cooper S-based MINI Carbon Edition as something special. At $56,990 drive-away, you nevertheless have to ask yourself if there are other places, even within the MINI stable, that you might go.

BMW certainly proved a few things when it launched the new-generation MINI in March 2002.

For one, it showed that it is possible to successfully reinvent a long-dead icon. For another, it showed that creative marketing nous can continue floating things that are suspected to suffer from limited-term buoyancy.

The German company could have chosen an easier route when it acquired the rights to create a 21st century version of the British 1960s small-car game-changer: It could have – like Volkswagen when it introduced the new-generation Beetle in January 2000 – simply draped a new shell over an existing, proven platform to create a modern, if superficial, interpretation of a decades-old design.

But BMW did a lot more than create a car that just looked like the past: It also imbued it with the dynamic character that was one of the things that made the original Mini so special. The re-born MINI came across as a legitimate modern-day interpretation of a design dating back to the late 1950s.

And those who questioned what sort of lifetime could be expected of a car with a character so tightly-defined that there seemed little room for future development have had their doubts answered in a barrage of creations that have broadened the MINI’s scope, yet retained the essential, distinct identity.

In fact the company at one stage had an over-proliferation of MINIs. In 2014 it axed a number of variants to bring the model count down to fundamentally four: the Clubman five-door wagon, the two-door convertible, the AWD Countryman five-door SUV, and three and five-door hatch variants.

The MINI has certainly proven it’s not a mere one-trick pony.

And, like practically everybody else, MINI is pretty adept at slotting-in the odd limited-build special to maintain and air of freshness.

The latest short-run MINI is the Cooper S-based Carbon Edition, a five-door hotshot that sits mid-way between the regular Cooper S and the maxi-power John Cooper Works (JCW) versions and is not directly comparable to anything else in the marketplace.

With its 2.0-litre turbo engine screwed up to wind out a hearty 155kW, along with 300Nm, the Carbon Edition is well in front of the regular Cooper S’s 141kW/280Nm, but still behind the 170kW/320Nm JCW (which is available in all four MINI variants).

And when we say limited-build, we mean limited-build: Just 40 MINI Carbons will be spread thinly across the nation, each with its own unique number.

Tagged at $56,900 drive-away and available only in automatic-transmission five-door form, the Carbon is a mix of black paint, cosmetic extravagances, hoonish aural feedback, dynamic tweaks and hot JCW engine bits.

There’s a JCW aero body kit with a rear spoiler, carbon fibre elements on the bonnet scoop and external mirrors, LED headlights and a tricked-out interior with sports leather seats and a full-length sunroof.

The extra power and torque come via a JCW tuning kit that doesn’t detract from flexibility with the maximum 300Nm of twist coming in at a super-low 1350rpm (the regular Cooper S outputs its 280Nm at just 1250rpm), while fuel consumption remains unchanged at 5.5L/100km – although we didn’t get near that on test with an average 9.1L recorded over one week and 500km or so of mixed driving.

The engine’s party trick is its ability to switch from regular exhaust to track mode by thumbing two clicks on a Bluetooth device that has its own cubby in the centre console. Although there’s a warning that advises its use “invalidates vehicle approval on the road”, only a rare Carbon Edition owner would be able to resist the temptation. Mind you, the firecracker reports booming from the tailpipe with each gearshift are remarkably loud. In reality, some discretion would be best advised.

For all this, the Carbon Edition isn’t super-fast. The quoted 0-100km/h figure for a regular Cooper S is 6.7sec and the JCW does it in 6.3sec so, although MINI doesn’t tell us, the actual figure is likely somewhere in between.

In the end, the throaty hum of the tweaked engine doesn’t signal anything outstanding in terms of acceleration, either from a standing start or under steam on the open road.

Though it’s a regular, conventional automatic, the six-speeder shifts with crisp precision and is helped along in the exploitation of the 6300rpm red line by steering wheel paddles.

The floor shift gives access to the sequential operation too, with the upshifts-downshifts reversed from common practice by shifting up a gear when the leather-clad lever is pulled back and downshifting when it’s shoved forward.

With its quick steering, chunky perforated leather-trimmed wheel and a suspension made more multi-purpose via standard electronic damping – and the use of the same 205/45R17 wheel/tyre dimensions (the wheels are JCW Track Spoke, painted black) as the standard Cooper S – the on-road experience is all MINI.

The steering’s weighting is nicely judged and the predictability and degree of grip are exactly what you’d expect given the car’s heritage – even the small touch of torque steer experienced once when the road surface wasn’t being too cooperative didn’t seem out of place. The electronic damping no doubt helps smooth-out the ride too, as it delays firming-up the shocks until the MINI is being driven with extra intent.

The cockpit is a busy, dare we say fiddly place. There are lots of minuscule buttons and switches and a scattered control placement that makes some operations awkward where they really need to be intuitive. It’s surprising too that a performance-oriented car like the Carbon Edition preferences road speed over engine speed: there’s a large dial for the speedo and a small crescent-moon dial on its left to advise of engine rpms. And the three additional instruments for oil pressure, boost pressure and stopwatch/lap timer that sit on top of the movable speedo/tacho pod as part of the standard Sports Chrono package are virtually impossible to read in daylight.

And we didn’t find the bar-graph fuel gauge all that easy to read either.

It’s not all bad though: The iDrive controller behind the shift lever that accesses functions on the 8.8-inch colour sat-nav screen is something of a saviour.

Cabin space? Well, today’s MINI, especially in five-door form, is a lot bigger than the original with a 2567mm wheelbase that’s closer to a Volkswagen Golf than, say, a Polo, and there’s a reasonably broad 1727mm beam.

But it’s still tight in the back seat, particularly for tall adults, and with its chopped-off rear-end the luggage space, at a claimed 278 litres, is nothing to get excited about.

The Carbon Edition raises a few questions that will probably be irrelevant because of the very limited numbers available. But, for example, if you are prepared to sacrifice some of the good gear in favour of more performance, the MINI JCW (three-door only) is always waiting in the wings, for a bit less money too.

In fact we ponder MINI’s reasons for not going for broke with a superheated JCW developing something like the power of, say, a Benz A 45 AMG (280kW/475Nm), and sending it through an all-wheel drive system such as that used in the Countryman. Although it would maybe contradict the MINI ethos, that would be some rocket.

But there is one thing for sure: The company has proven it is easily able to spring surprises that don’t compromise the essence of the MINI. No end is in sight yet.

2016 MINI Carbon Edition pricing and specifications:
Price: $56,900 (driveaway)
Engine: 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol
Output: 155kW/300Nm
Transmission: Six-speed automatic
Fuel: 5.5L/100km (ADR Combined)
CO2: 129g/km (ADR Combined)
Safety Rating: Four-star ANCAP

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