2005 Mini Cooper S Test Drive

Pop-Top Mini

A four-seat sports car that's useful, sensibly priced -- and turns heads.

If you've never known Ragtop Season, we're deeply aggrieved -- but your prognosis is still hopeful. First, we can describe this state of existence to you and perhaps cure you of your surely deprived, weakened state (officially known as "lidded driving").

Here's the setup: It's hot out, and when you lower all the windows in your unyieldingly close-roofed car, the air flows over you, and you can feel the warm sun on your arm and face. You know this experience; it's somewhat liberating, right? There's just one problem, which is that you don't quite feel free from the cage of your car. You're like the apartment-dwelling family dog, now headed to the country for the weekend in his master's car. Your snout is jammed out over the edge of the partially lowered glass, pressing and straining for more fresh air. Like the pooch, you really want that flow surrounding you; the wind in your hair, the world a whirl, a big, beaming grin that you can't wipe off plastered to your face. (What, you've never seen a dog smile?)

You even desire for the world to see you grinning in this way -- and, remarkably, during Ragtop Season, they will. What's more, when you gently cruise up to a light, and you focus on the adjacent sidewalk cafe, the crowd looks back -- and suddenly you're no caged canine but, instead, an exceptionally cool and, perhaps, even sexy adult human.

Got it? Ragtop Season brings this experience to the lucky few. Yes, very, very few. While the American market for convertibles dwarfs all others on the planet, soft-top car sales are still tiny. Even if you were to aggregate all convertible sales annually (315,306 in 2004, according to Michigan-based automotive consumer marketing firm R.L. Polk & Co.) you're still talking about one of the smallest pieces of the automotive pie -- less than 2% of the marketplace.

So if you know Ragtop Season personally, you're part of a privileged society. And if you know it because you own (or have owned) a convertible sports car, all the better -- and rarer. Our picks of the modern sports car lot that can be had as open-toppers would have to include the BMW M3 convertible, the Porsche Carrera Cabriolet, DaimlerChrysler's newest and greatly improved Mercedes-Benz SLK, the Mazda Miata (now long in the tooth but on its way to being replaced early next year), Honda Motor's exquisitely fun S2000, Nissan's 350Z convertible and the new Ford Motor's Mustang in its convertible format. Ah, yes, there are a few toys we'd add from Ferrari and Lamborghini, as well, should we be so lucky.

On the more approachable side, there's the subject of this review -- the $24,400 Mini Cooper S Convertible, a car that, dollar for dollar, may be the most balanced and versatile soft-top sports machine ever devised.

Right...You think we forgot a couple players in this mix, don't you? The Volkswagen New Beetle Convertible and the Chrysler PT Cruiser convertible, perhaps? Well, honestly, no, we didn't forget. Neither of these cars comes even remotely close to delivering the performance of the Mini Cooper S soft top, and while the Beetle can, with effort, feign and dodge its way through the dangerous waters of a sporty course, the PT boat is all eyed up by the submarine commander -- a sitting duck in a sea where it has no business frolicking.

Throw the Mini -- which is owned by BMW -- into a similar pond and it positively leaves the other two crafts drowning in its wake. It can scoot to 60 mph in well under seven seconds, making it considerably faster; it can out-corner both the PT and the VW, not to mention many of the more serious (and more seriously pricey) two-seaters mentioned above; and it still keeps the use of its backseats, which are, we'd add, somewhat more comfortable perches than those you'll get with your $79,100 Porsche Carrera Cabriolet.

And while you lose the hatchback functionality of the hardtop Mini with the Convertible model, this car actually has MORE room behind the rear seats (OK, it's only bigger by one lousy cubic foot and is hardly huge at six cubic feet with the top up and four cubic feet with the roof lowered). But given the easy-to-swallow sticker price, the excellent performance, the relatively high level of usefulness (more on this on the next page) and all of the thumbs-ups and alluring double takes we received while test driving this car, you're betting we're madly in love with this ragtop. And you're mostly right. Mostly...