2025 Mini Cooper S Review: Back to School

It is sometimes said that “college is the best time of your life,” but if you ask me, those who actually believe that are probably doing life wrong. Sure, there were fun parts about that time period—it’s a convenience being able to run on nothing but ramen all day without getting a stomachache, and having few real responsibilities is a luxury I often wish I could get back—but not in a million years would I earnestly want to go back. I enjoy not having roommates, living in a decent food city, no exams, and having disposable income way too much.

The whole experience reminds me of the 2025 Mini Cooper S: a car seemingly built for people who are still living on cup noodles and finding their place in this world. It’s rough around the edges in a way that would be fine to those who simply don’t know any better. But it’s also genuinely fun to drive in a way that doesn’t overwhelm, fun to look at, and relatively frugal. In other words, an ideal car for those who still celebrate Back to School.

Fashion Is Circular

The 2025 Mini Cooper marks the start of the fourth-generation rebooted-for-modern-times Cooper—if Mini Coopers were Planet of the Apes movies, this would be Kingdom. Up front, the changes are subtle; the previous gen’s goatee grille frame is intact but it’s all been smoothed out and simplified somewhat. Around back, however, we get to what is arguably one of the biggest design departures this car has received since BMW brought it back in 2001.

It looks squatter than before and the whole thing just looks cleaner and more modern. New triangular taillights mark this Cooper out as The New One and make the whole Union Jack motif a bit less obvious than before, albeit still lurking around. If only colonialism were still fashionable.

The inside of the Mini Cooper has been given a major overhaul. Circles and ovoids are still the name of the game and I’m a fan of the single, cloth steering wheel spoke and bronze-ish trim accents. Where the previous Mini’s screens were pretty clearly rectangular displays fit into bezels meant to give the illusion that they were circular, this new Mini’s big central touchscreen is actually a circle. As an output device that projects graphics and information, it’s quite impressive. It’s an OLED display so blacks are deep and colors are vibrant.

Feel Old Yet?

Interacting with Mini’s new circular infotainment system, however, reminded me of the first time I tried to use Snapchat. It made me feel old. Can I tap on this icon or is it purely a display thing? How do I turn the tap-feedback sound off? Does changing the infotainment theme with the “Experiences” switch change how the car drives or no? Maybe this is marking me out as a decrepit Asian uncle who still has trouble typing on his iPhone, but I can’t help but feel like this thing would be way easier to use if it had a regular, rectangular screen. Although, to be fair to Mini and the sort of people it’s trying to target, where’s the fun in that?

And all that said, given the non-conventional shape Mini’s UI designers were given to work with, the infotainment system’s layout definitely could’ve been worse. Temperature controls and shortcuts to home, nav, media, and Apple CarPlay (wireless, by the way) are all easily accessible while the speed readout is big and clear. The heads-up display is still projected onto a little transparent flip-up screen, a necessity I suspect is a result of this car’s very upright windshield. It’s fine for regular-sized folks, but a shorter co-driver complained that it distractingly obstructs the view of the road and had to turn it off completely.

Outside of the screens, the Mini Cooper’s human-machine interface is not bad. Buttons on the steering wheel are actual buttons and laid out in a way that makes sense, there’s a real volume knob (the power icon in the middle spins with the knob, though), the gear select nub is easy to use despite being the size of a literal light switch, and the engine start thingy delightfully emulates the twist of a key. (Are you seeing this, Porsche?)

It’s also an interior that feels solidly put together with rear seats that are surprisingly useable. I wouldn’t put adults back there on long trips but, for what it’s worth, my five-eight self can sit up straight without any hair-on-roof contact.

Subdued Sport

Despite this being the S, Mini has removed one of what was once this model’s more distinctive design elements: the mid-mounted dual beer-can exhaust. In fact, the new Cooper S doesn’t have any visible exhaust tips at all—an ode, perhaps, to today’s youths’ admirable propensity to drink less. I suspect this was done to future-proof it against a supposedly inevitable EV future, but in the here and now, it feels like it’s visually missing something.

The lack of boy-racer tailpipes makes a bit more sense, though, once you start driving the new Mini Cooper S. This is a hot hatch that never drives like it’s trying too hard—refreshing, frankly, in an age where everybody from Toyota to Cadillac is chasing Sporty. Most of the time, it feels quite normal. There are no manual shift paddles behind the steering wheel, the steering wheel is still a perfect circle, the steering itself is never overly heavy, the ride is dailyable, and none of the interior materials pretend to be carbon fiber.

Mind you, that tiny wheelbase and relatively light weight (Cooper S weighs 3,014 pounds) means it’s still quite fun to bomb around in in that quintessential Mini go-kart way (the sporty drive mode is literally called go-kart mode). Hustle and throw the Cooper S and the steering is quick, direct, well-weighted, and makes the whole thing delightfully toy-like. Good, it’s still a Mini.

The engine, a 201-horsepower B48 BMW turbo-four, feels and sounds stout and very much like that company’s famously robust straight-six with two fewer cylinders. Nicely bassy, there are even some turbo whooshing noises if you listen for it. Zero to 60 mph happens in 6.3 seconds and Mini quotes a top speed of 150 mph. All-in-all, the Cooper S is just powerful enough to get out of its own way, never overwhelmingly quick, and weirdly nice to listen to.

A seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission does the job but is also, sadly, now the only gearbox option.

The Highs and Lows

There are things to like about the Mini Cooper S—the formula wouldn’t have lasted this long if there wasn’t. It’s dartily, accessibly fun to throw around, the acceleration is decently exciting, and its Miniature dimensions make it easy to park and a novel thing to look back at once you’ve done so.

But that whimsy does come with some asterisks. The passenger door, for example, does not appear to have any touch-sensitive areas which means you cannot unlock or lock from that side of the car with the key fob in your pocket. (Although, if you are, say, a young woman planning to have this car as a college runabout, this may actually be considered a safety feature.) On that note, I will reiterate that the new Cooper is a car that makes me feel old. Its UI feels like it was designed by and for people much younger than me, the slightly rough-to-touch carpet dash trim feels ripped off of campus furniture, and even the seats feel a bit like they were sculpted for people who can still fall asleep on a dorm room floor.

Ironically, though, the tech runs annoyingly slowly. Switching between drive/infotainment modes (aka “Experiences”) not only takes an eternity but also annoyingly pauses your music. Even without input, CarPlay audio sometimes skips for no reason like an old CD player, and the circular infotainment system in general is the very definition of form over function. You know what this system reminds me of? The native operating system that comes in so-called smart TVs. You can have the biggest, nicest display in the world with imperceptible pixels, inky blacks, and pitch-perfect colors, but if the processor chosen to actually let you do anything on there is clearly, consistently not up to snuff, the experience will be subpar, taking forever to boot up and load Netflix. (For the record, just get that Apple TV box and don’t look back.)

Also, after a whole week with the Mini, I still could not figure out how to turn the touchscreen feedback beep off.

Moving On

Starting at $33,195, the 2025 Mini Cooper S is an enjoyable starter performance car that’s more livable than, say, the Mazda MX-5 and more forgiving than the Toyota GR86. In casual hands, its point-and-shoot FWD-ness may make it feel quicker than those two, too. It’s also a reasonably practical car for its size despite still feeling like an oversized go-kart—that typical Mini agility is indeed there when you ask for it, but it rarely feels like you’re compromising daily driving comfort for sport. It’s also fairly fuel-efficient, rated for 32 mpg combined by the EPA and logging 31 mpg over 360 test miles.

Where the compromises do appear, though, are in its general user experience as an item. The Mini Cooper is what you get when you want your car to make you feel like you’re in college again, but once it’s actually in your driveway, you forget how stiff those rez beds used to be. Oh, and since you graduated, the students of today are way better at phones than you are.

As it happens, all of the photos in this review were taken at my alma mater. It’s been years since I’ve visited and going back was nostalgic but not necessarily in a “I miss it” sort of way. It’s easy to think you’re having fun when you’re 20 with nothing but $41 in the bank and a lot of dipshit opinions. But I—and I hope you—have moved past those days.

Cute, chuckable, and seemingly designed for a cohort to whom cigarettes were never cool, the new Mini Cooper S can be a solid, enjoyable daily driver for those still finding their sea legs in life and looking for a fun first car. For the rest of us, it’s a somewhat jarring reminder of how we used to be, for both better and worse.

Got a tip or question for the author about the Mini Cooper S? You can reach him here: chris.tsui@thedrive.com