I Shall Call Him `Mini Me'; Superchargers? We don't need no stinking superchargers.(BMW Mini Cooper)(Brief Article)

While McGuire was off in Europe thrashing the supercharged Cooper S, the duty of thrashing the naturally aspirated no-suffix Cooper fell to us here in America. Tough duty, we thought, soldiering on minus 48 of the 163 horsepower in the supercharged Cooper S.

Not having driven the S we can't really compare it to the Cooper except to say, ``Why would you need more?'' Even with ``only'' 115 hp from the naturally aspirated 1.6-liter four driving the front wheels through a five-speed manual the Cooper still has a weight-to-power ratio of 21.9:1. That's good for a 0-to-60 time of 8.5 seconds, Mini says, which ain't too bad.

But the Mini won't be known for power, it will be known for fun, big fun for such a small package. It's wildly enjoyable to fling about-so light, small, nimble and wheelable, that from the driver's seat you can't imagine needing anything else.

And yes, there were bad roads where we drove: potholed, sinkholed, blackholed whoop-de-dos that would give most anything else of this size severe bump-stopping, axle-crashing, directional-stability worries. The Cooper simply absorbed it all and kept going. It never once bottomed out despite ridiculous loads caused by the bad roads and the over-300 pounds of driver and passenger smooshing the tiny hatchback's 2524-pound curb weight onto the pavement. The MacPherson strut front and semi-trailing rear (shared with E30 BMWs like the Z3, 318ti and previous M3) absorbed full jounce and rebound without protest. Both front and rear wheels stayed pointed straight ahead despite what the road was trying to do to them.

We spent a day careening along the two-lane, twisting roads snaking through the hills north of San Francisco in a steady downpour. It was weather and country that would make ...