Cabin comfort and features
Being a two-door four seat (well) machine, the bigger focus of the Convertible is to get people ogling at it and letting the driver and the front passenger experience open top motoring at its best. Facilitating a comfortable interstate transport for the back benchers is not the priority here. Having said that, the back seat isn’t compulsorily meant only for dogs or little kids. Even a medium sized adult can hop in and travel short to medium distances in the car without having to be a contortionist. I put two of my family members in the backseat and they didn’t have any problems traveling 20-30 odd km at a stretch. Two kids, a 14 year old girl and a 12 year old boy were entirely cheery after a one way 140 km drive.
The front seats have to be dropped down and shifted forward for access to the rear seats. Inside the cabin, you get a delightful fusion of retro elements and modern tech. A big analogue speedo takes most space on the central console. There are ribbed leather seats, aircraft turbine styled a/c vents and loads and loads of chrome – the interior that won us over when we drove the Countryman is more or less the same in the Convertible, at least the front part.
The aircraft style chrome plated, shiny stainless steel toggle switches placed between steel hooks are a treat to the eyes. Although not very ergonomic, those retro style switches would still make you roll down a window, or turn on a light just to use them. And you get one extra such button on the Convertible, the one to deploy and retract the soft top.
The cabin is built solid with use of expensive materials, put together with a built to last feel and finished immaculately. The seats up front are nice and comfy with good lateral bolstering. The chunky three spoke steering wheel is nice to hold, with buttons audio, telephone and cruise control buttons mounted on it. The retro styled central console rimmed with a speedo houses a coolly backlit modern digital interface to control various functions.
Apart from all the retro bling, you get automatic air conditioning, auto transmission, park-distance control and driver seat height adjustment as standard. If you want more, there is a liberal options list too, capable of setting you back by lakhs if you wish for the extra bells and whistles.
The front seats are not electrically adjustable even as an option. The access to the boot is via the tail. Pressing the boot release on the stylish lolly shaped key makes the lid come out and create a flat bed, making for easy loading and unloading of luggage. The 60:40 split seats can be dropped for expanding the boot space and through loading. In addition you also get a backseat parcel tray as an accessory in case you simply want to pop your smaller bags and other stuff over the backseat. For those of you who would fancy lighting a cancer stick while driving in open air, MINI have also included a Smoker’s package.
The engineers at MINI have done a great job of letting the occupants enjoy open top motoring without getting perturbed by the wind. Wind is deflected exceptionally well, and you won’t suffer messy hair until you are doing speeds well above the triple digit figure. You do get to hear ambient sounds (in most cases noise) rather well though, even with the ragtop up. There is a rollover protection system in place as well which deploys the neatly hidden rollover protection bars only on sensing an accident. The single-piece roll bar behind the rear seats extending across the complete interior width of the car doesn’t obstruct the driver’s line of visibility in any way when looking to the rear and moves up automatically only in the event of an imminent rollover. Apart from the rollover protection system, 4 airbags (2 front and 2 head-and-thorax airbags), Brake assist, ABS, Runflat indicator, Dynamic Stability Control (DSC) and 3-point seat belts on all seats complete the safety net for the MINI Convertible.
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