As Promised: A Mini Cooper Extravaganza

When lighting and mood finally aligned, I took these shots of my super cool new Mini Cooper. It’s a total blast to drive. It gets AMAZING gas mileage, and it’s beyond cute.

It came with a CD-ROM with oodles of video clips that explain all the buttons, switches, and other do-dads. I haven’t figured much of it out yet, including the feature that automatically turns up the radio when you drive faster (to compensate for greater road noise). I have heated seats, which seems really silly to me, but other people say I will love them come winter.

One feature I like for summer is that one flick of the window switch and the window goes all the way down. It’s great on hot days, when you want to air out the car quickly.

We did take the Mini out to dinner with friends a couple weeks ago, and I’ll admit that it’s fairly squishy on leg room. Then, again, I was sitting behind that tall boy I’m married to. It’s not much of an issue because I almost never have more than one human passenger.

This is the little trunk space. It works fine for my usual shopping trips, etc. And, as you’ve seen in other photos of Lilly in her crate, the seats fold down to make a pretty spacious cargo area for a couple of girls our size.

And, maybe my favorite feature … the dual sunroofs. This shows the sunshades drawn, but you can retract them too. The front one has three positions — closed, popped up kind of like a wing window, and fully open. The back one does not open, but Lilly can see out it through the top mesh in her crate.