2027 MINI Cooper S Convertible

[MiniGene]

The wife's 2016 MINI Cooper S had a check engine light that I couldn't easily get rid of so much to my delight, I found that it was covered under Mini's extended warranty for emissions stuff; 150K miles or 15 years, what ever comes first.  I took it to the dealer and they asked if I needed a loaner.  Hell yeah I did! 

They tossed me the keys to a 2027 MINI Cooper S Convertible!  Had it for about a week.  What a fun car.  We've never had a convertible so we really had fun this past weekend cruising all over town with the top down. 

One thing I didn't like was having to use the touch screen for things like the AC. I need to have my hands on knobs! LOL

 

[cstudep]

Nice! I also find the lack of knobs in newer cars extremely annoying. You don't even have to look to run things with knobs once you are even a little familiar with the car, not so much with all the touch screen stuff.

[MiniDave]

Fun! That's what Mini/MINIs are all about!

The touch screen issue is one that stopped us from buying a 2019 Allroad we were considering at one point, talk about distracted driving!

This issue became enough of a thorn that some MFRs have added knobs for HVAC and the radio (at least the volume) back to the dash....

Our 2017 and 2018 Allroads are plenty complicated enough but don't have any touchscreen controls, my techy wife really likes all the stuff they do, and we're happy that they don't have too many nannies.....no lane warnings, no self driving cruise control stuff and so on. I think it could use a bigger screen for the nav, backup camera and MMI, but the clarity is awesome.

[Dan Moffet]

What I want to know is why you'd be messing wiht AC with the top down?

[MiniGene]

Yeah, it was a blast!

I thought auto designers had received the message that nobody like touch screens for the regular controls.  I guess not.


The thing had plenty of power--it was quick and nimble.  One thing that was kind of neat was the center console engine start/stop switch.  I should have gotten a picture but it was a paddle type switch that you twist.  I thought it was weird until I realized that they were paying homage to the ignition switch position in a MKI/II Mini.