Hardly out of the ordinary in a supermini, but more notable in the A1 because it’s just so damn quiet. The suspension can sweat the small stuff, but give it a really meaty imperfection to chew on and it runs out of travel. Only when you come across a really big pothole does the A1 give the game away, big-style, as a jolt ricochets through the structure.
Mark the date, here we are in December 2018, and we’re driving an Audi S-line that smothers British roads like it’s levitating. It’s been to finishing school, and the result is possibly the most refined small car ever. In other words the MINI delivers on performance and excitement. It’s never harsh, but it likes to excitedly inform you of pretty much any road imperfection, tugging at your hands like a hyperactive child clinging onto a weary parent. Some of that would be mitigated by binning the ugly Sport Pack and its John Cooper Works 17-inch rims, but the bobbly ride is a Mini trait you’ll not eradicate with any combination of options. The price you pay for the Mini’s freakish body control and agility when you’re really leaning on it, and marvelling at how it grips, how truly it steers, and how obediently it responds to lifting off the throttle and quick steering inputs, is a boisterous ride around town. The amount of fun you can have with a bare-bones MINI Cooper is amazing given the rest of the similar priced automotive market. Sure, all the ‘maximum go-kart feel’ marketing is nonsense, but underneath it all – and even on a humble automatic Cooper with no driving modes or adaptive suspension, this is still a cracking chassis.
Get a clean entry to the roundabout, or any set of bends, and the Mini will make the most of them. But before we get to that, lets look at what where the MINI won and lost against the all new A1: Top Gear gear took the MINI Cooper out against the all new Audi A1 recently and came away with a tighter battle then we would have expected.
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