More car geekery

There's a Mini Cooper dealership near my work, so I went down to test drive one on my lunch hour. It's impossible not to smile when you walk up to one of those things, they are so damn great. The interior is shockingly roomy, I swear they are bigger on the inside than they are on the outside; it's a cavernous fishbowl with aluminum accents, the interior details are all these friendly-yet-efficient ovals and young, eager curves. It oozes a comfortable hipness, it doesn't flex the euro-muscle of its BMW manufacture, but it arrives with an assertiveness completely lacking in the New Beetle.

On the road, there's really nothing else like it. It's a playful, oversized go-kart, it makes everything else on the road look lumbering and oafish. It goes precisely where you steer it, stomp the brakes and it sits right down with an immediacy of a well-trained foxhound. There's not enough horsepower here to win any races, but it'll scoot around the city and merge onto the highway with no fear.

I don’t want to own a Mini, but I'm so happy they exist.