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Never start a sentence about Congress with the phrase, "In its wisdom," because it’s plain that most of its august members could star in Dumb and Dumber without changing a thing.
While voting for massive highway subsidies, the House Appropriations Committee voted last week to cut funding for bicycle paths and railroad station restorations. And in the face of ever-more-uncertain oil supplies, the Senate voted to once again defeat tighter fuel-economy standards.
The result is that even as we develop better technology (lighter materials, more efficient engines) to save gas, our actual fuel consumption numbers are moving backwards.
As the Sierra Club points out, the Ford Model T got better mileage (25 mpg) than the current average of Ford cars and trucks (22.6 mpg). This week, Sierra also launched a frontal assault on the General Motors Hummer H2 (www.hummerdinger.com), which gets only 10 mpg and leads the J.D. Power and Associates customer dissatisfaction index. None of that has affected sales very much. The Iraq war spurred sales. "This vehicle feels very patriotic," commented a dealer who sold 12 in a single day.
Against this backdrop, the Mini Cooper is a fresh breeze. Here’s another trend vehicle, and it gets as much as 37 mpg in highway driving. According to BMW, which makes the Mini, sales have greatly exceeded expectations. In the first half of 2002, the company sold 62,000 worldwide, and has increased capacity to 120,000 per year.
I’ve admired the reborn Mini since I saw the first sketches, and later met the German designer at, of all places, the Museum of Modern Art in New York. I am also an unabashed fan of the first Mini, which gave the VW Beetle a run for its money when it debuted in 1959. Alec Issigonis’ design stayed fresh for more than 25 years, and it was rightly lauded for its compactly packaged rear engine, tall greenhouse and overall brilliant use of space. As small as the Mini is, it feels big inside.
The new car is a smartly rendered update of the Mini concept. It has just enough retro Mini cues to remind consumers of the old car without seeming dated. On top of that is German engineering, which trumps British workmanship any day. (Ever wondered what happened to the British car industry? Remember Lucas electrics and Smiths gauges — and shudder.)
My test car was a Mini Cooper S, evocative of the (relatively rare) high-performance versions of the early Mini produced by John Cooper. That Cooper S won the Monte Carlo Rally three times. This one isn’t quite as wild and wooly, but it does offer a supercharged 1.6-liter engine that produces 163 horsepower (compared to the base Mini Cooper’s 115). Also on board is a six-speed transmission to replace the entry-level’s five, and any number of rakish scoops and flairs.
I liked the Cooper S just fine, but had some qualms about the electro-hydraulic speed-sensitive steering. It’s Germanically heavy. Minis should be "chuckable." Did you see The Italian Job, new or old? Both star Minis, going where no cars have gone before. The steering on today’s Cooper S is very sharp, but you really have to haul it around corners.
I liked nearly everything else: the trendy but readable instruments (with the tach mounted forward of the driver, and the huge speedometer in the center), the comfortable seats that slide to accommodate 6-footers, the great visibility, the cool hatchback, the smooth shifter.
I’m encouraged that nearly as many people stopped and asked about the Mini as inquired about the Volkswagen Touareg. Almost as many.
