2009 MINI Cooper Base 2dr Hatchback Review Summaries

What reviewers liked most about the MINI Cooper:

Body roll is minimal, even in high-speed turns, and the car's exceptional stiffness simply enhances the feeling of stability and control.

-- Cars.com

Color options outnumber those in a bag of jelly beans and can be topped with a roof that's either body-colored, black or white.

-- New Car Test Drive

BMW priced the Mini with an appreciation for real-world pocketbooks...yet endowed it with a visual and physical opulence that ratchets up its value quotient.

-- New Car Test Drive

...the Mini's mini engine, a 1.6-liter, overhead-cam four-cylinder, is plenty grunty enough.

-- The Car Connection

What reviewers liked least about the MINI Cooper:

The rear seats are simply too cramped if the driver and front passenger are much taller than 5 1/2 feet.

-- Cars.com

When it comes to bumpy roads, though, the Mini and the road surface must agree to disagree, and often it's not a polite conversation.

-- The Car Connection

MINI Cooper Comparisons:

The tougher choice comes when the S is held up against more conventional performance sedans in the same price range...including the GTI 1.8T, Civic Si, Sentra SE-R Spec V and SVT Focus.

-- AutoWeek

And the trunk holds a laughable 5.3 cubic feet of cargo...that's just a smidgen more trunk space than a Mazda Miata.

-- Cars.com

Best one-liner about the MINI Cooper:

The eagerly awaited Mini has arrived with the emotional appeal of a puppy, the high-style gloss of a fashion magazine and the technological edge of a Los Alamos lab.

-- New Car Test Drive

Despite the shopworn bleatings of Madison Avenue and the very premise of whole ranges of adult videos, small can be satisfying.

-- The Car Connection