2025 Mini Cooper S 4-Door Is Like A Half-Trained Puppy You Love With All Your Heart

I am a certified Mini person. I own a 2017 Mini Cooper S 4-Door hardtop, and I love it to the moon and back. It’s whimsical and has features that exist solely to make its occupants smile — my car is perpetually in what I call “disco mode,” which continuously shuffles between all of the ambient lighting colors. If I want to change that, I simply flick the ceiling-mounted toggle switch to easily select any one of the colors, or press and hold it to re-engage disco mode. That spirit of fun and tactility is spread throughout every Mini interior, and it’s even stronger with the latest generation.

The Mini Cooper S was redesigned for 2025, and the company went with a design ethos of “charismatic simplicity.” I think the new design went a bit too far, considering that it did away with the frivolous-yet-distinctive hood scoop, the center-mounted beer can–shaped dual exhaust, and the overall quirky maximalist ideology that made modern Minis so appealing. I’m happy to report, though, that driving the new Mini is still a laugh.

Full disclosure: Mini gave me a Chili Red 2025 Mini Cooper S 4-Door to live with for a week, and I had a blast scooting around LA and blasting down some mountain roads. I told my Mini not to worry, and that the 2025 Cooper S was just a new coworker, not a long-term thing.

It’s no secret that the Volkswagen GTI is the ubiquitous (and pretty objectively best) hot hatchback, and has been for a long time. It’s a precise, fast, capable little car that can tackle a track day just as tactfully as it can tackle a Costco run. It’s handsome, and it rides the line between a plasticky economy car and a leather-lined luxury vehicle. It’s quiet, solid, well-made, spacious, and distinguished. The GTI is the car you pick if you want your hot hatchback to be objectively good in every situation. If it were a dog, it would be a well-trained service dog that can handle just about any task you ask of it.

A Mini Cooper S, in contrast, is more like a puppy that you love more than life itself and want to unleash all your cuteness aggression on, but that’s still clumsy, isn’t the most obedient, and can drive you a little crazy at times. The new F65 generation receives a welcome boost in power over the outgoing car, but the front wheels torque-steer all over the place under hard acceleration, so the comically chunky steering wheel always requires a firm grip. Its turn-in behavior is so eager it feels like you can whip it around 90-degree turns faster than a Porsche 911, but push it too hard on a serious driving road and the nose runs wide. It turns daily commutes on crowded roads into fun zippy adventures, but the ride is firm enough that you’ll wince driving over broken pavement if you have even the slightest bit of mechanical sympathy. It’s not perfect, but I’ll tell ya, if you want your car to make you smile while staying close to the speed limit, it’s still hard to beat a Mini.

The fourth-generation Mini Cooper S finally breaches 200 horsepower for the first time in a non-JCW model. It’s still powered by a trusty turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-4 and a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission, but it now makes 201 horsepower and 221 pound-feet of torque, up 12 hp and 14 lb-ft. No manual transmission is offered in the F65 Cooper, and the only way to select your own gears in a 2025 Mini Cooper S is by opting into several option packages that will eventually include a sports steering wheel with paddle shifters. To get those paddle shifters, the car must have the $5,100 Iconic Trim Package, which unlocks the ability to pay an additional $1,200 for the John Cooper Works Style Package that includes paddle shifters. That’s a total of $6,300 above the Cooper S 4-Door’s $34,375 base price (including $1,175 destination). That’s wack.

My press car didn’t have that package, so I had no way to select my own gears, and you know what? I didn’t really care. Even when I was hustling it through mountain roads, I just pushed the gear selector down again into “Low” mode which holds the lowest gear possible, and I found it to be effective at keeping me in the power band. If I really needed to wake it up, the kickdown switch that lives under the accelerator pedal is easily accessed by flooring the throttle for a brief moment and the engine is raring to go. In the canyons the Cooper S’ brakes performed exceptionally well, with a wonderfully firm pedal feel and linear progression as I depressed it harder. It all comes together to form a fun experience that was satisfying despite the lack of shiftability and some sloppiness at its limit.

The increased power output makes the new Mini quite quick, especially once I’m already in motion. Mini claims the 2025 Cooper S 4-Door goes from 0 to 60 mph in 6.5 seconds, which is only one-tenth of a second faster than the outgoing car despite feeling noticeably more powerful in day-to-day driving. I never wanted for more power when I was in the Mini, as its torquey bottom-end made passing or fast corner exits a breeze. Launching from a dig exposes the pitfalls of its front-wheel-drive nature, but it still gets going pretty quickly. I did not expect the Mini to mask its speed as well as it does, so keep an eye on the speedometer when on the freeway or you might end up cruising at 90 without realizing.

As I mentioned when explaining the puppy theory, the new Cooper S is still a chuckable, zippy fun machine. It might not be the most composed at high speeds or near its handling limits, but it elicits devious grins and cheeky chortles from the driver in every city situation, which is where most Minis live out their lives.

The firm suspension keeps body roll to a minimum, and the very fat steering wheel does communicate some of what the front wheels are doing. Enter a corner too hot and I found understeer, but tap the brake pedal and the rear end is eager to rotate, swiftly reestablishing the intended course. Maximum grip levels aren’t super impressive, but it’s still fun to scoot down a twisty road, and most of that joy can be accessed when zipping around town. I don’t have to think twice about making that yellow turn arrow, I can just whip the Mini through a 90-degree turn at the speed limit without drama. My tester had the $500 Dynamic Damper Control option, and I didn’t notice any reason to have it. Compared to my 2017 Mini’s adaptive damper option, the 2025 always rode as harshly as my car does when I switch it into Sport mode.

Though the new Mini has grown a bit in size, at 158.9 inches long it’s almost two feet shorter than a Civic hatchback and 10 inches shorter than a GTI, which makes parking a breeze. The Comfort Plus Package on my press car included Mini Parking Assistant Plus that will autonomously squeeze you into the tightest spot imaginable, and get you ready to pull out of it when you leave. Everything about its in-town behavior is entertaining, aside from the annoyingly firm ride. That firm ride does showcase how stiff the updated chassis is and how solid the whole car feels, which is reassuring when I’m driving a comparatively diminutive 3,089-pound Mini in LA traffic next to 9,000-pound Cadillac Escalade IQs.

The 2025 Mini’s new design is a totally different vibe than the 2024 car. Styling is subjective, but I think the new Mini is a bit too grown-up and reserved. The outgoing car had a distinctive hood scoop that was not functional at all, purely there for the optics. Every Mini Cooper S in the 21st century prior to the 2025 redesign had dual center-mounted exhaust tips, but that’s all been thrown out the window with the new model, which has no visible exhaust unless you go for the JCW. Every Mini Cooper hatchback and convertible prior to the redesign had a side indicator or a badge mounted at the base of the A-pillar that showcased a big red swooping “S” on Cooper S models, but that’s also now gone. The gas cap could be optioned to be a retro-style chrome one, where the new Mini is stuck with a plain old body color flap. The new design is still more charismatic than something like a GTI, but it feels like the sweet, playful Mini I know and love has grown up too fast.

Mini has gone from maximalist to minimalist on the interior as well, but there are still some fun design details. The materials used in the interior are unlike those in many other cars, with a very coarse fabric covering most of the surfaces where the previous model had padded leather-like panels. Almost any surface that isn’t covered in that elbow-scraping coarse fabric is made of hard plastic, save for the arm rests. The front seats are just as spacious as the outgoing Cooper S 4-Door’s, at least, and if the front seats are spacious enough to comfortably fit my 6-foot-8 body, they’re spacious enough for most folks. The back seats are useless if you’re my height, but if front seat occupants are of average height and scoot the seats up a bit, the rear seats are actually reasonably comfortable and spacious.

The big controversy with the redesigned fourth-generation Mini Cooper surrounds the industry’s first circular OLED touchscreen infotainment system, since everything except the drive mode selector and volume knob are now integrated into that screen. Nearly all of the physical switchgear, like those toggle switches I love so much, has been over-consolidated. The screen in question is exceptionally clear and the picture quality is fantastic, but the software is laggy on occasion, and the menu structure is concerningly convoluted.

Commonly adjusted functions like changing the follow distance for the adaptive cruise control can only be performed by tapping through multiple menus. Potentially the biggest frustration with operating the screen is that there isn’t anywhere natural to rest my wrist while I make my on-screen selections. Attempting to press the desired icon on the screen without somewhere to stabilize your hand while getting jostled around by the Cooper S’ jittery firm ride is infuriating. And as someone who prefers manual climate controls to auto climate control, changing the fan speed is a needlessly overcomplicated process on a Union Jack screen that’s hard to decipher at a glance.

Logan K. Carter/ Jalopnik

Some folks take issue with the fact that the redesign does away with the traditional gauge cluster, and while I don’t like that the primary gauges are now integrated into the center screen, the standard head-up display does a great job of displaying the necessities.. That standard head-up display is the deployable type, which projects information onto a flip-up plastic rectangle mounted at the base of the windshield. It does not project data directly onto the windshield, which bugs some people, but I have no issue with it. It works well, and I actually like that it’s not projected onto the windshield.

Perhaps the most disappointing interior feature lost in the redesign is the death of that disco mode. I am a massive proponent of disco mode, clearly.

Minis occupy a weird niche in the market; they’re not economy cars but not quite full luxury cars either, and price-wise they tend to be closer to the premium price spectrum, which used to be a hard pill to swallow. Now though, the Cooper S is finally available for the first time ever with — drumroll please — power seats! (Though only on the top trim.) It also comes standard with blind-spot monitoring! Those two features have been available on much more common and affordable cars for years now, but never on a Mini Cooper. Along with those newly available very luxurious features is a capable $600 adaptive cruise control system with stop and go functionality as well as Active Driving Assistant which provides adaptive cruise control, lane-keeping and lane centering performed flawlessly in my week with the car.

Other features I enjoyed on my press car were the standard panoramic sunroof, and the upgraded Harmon Kardon stereo, fancy parking tech and wireless charger that are all included as part of the $1,700 Iconic trim. The trim levels and packages are very confusing. If you choose another trim, those features are all included in the Comfort Package Plus.

In a world where the average transaction price of a new car is nearly $50,000, my test car’s $38,795 price seems almost reasonable, and the Cooper S 4-Door’s $34,375 base price (including destination) more so. My test car felt well-equipped, with the only glaring omission being power seats. The new Honda Civic Hybrid can be equipped up to about $38,000, and a similarly equipped Volkswagen GTI Autobahn costs over $41,000, so the Mini’s closest competitors are no longer the best bargains, either

If you’re the type of person who doesn’t take life too seriously, if you live in a city and like having fun behind the wheel, if you value whimsy and aren’t afraid of what other people think about you — the 2025 Mini Cooper S could be the hot hatch for you. It’s distinctive, bold, fun and funky, in a world where few approachable new cars are.

However, with Trump’s tariffs looming, the new Mini’s affordability may all go out the window. On the bright side, if you are willing to buy used, previous-generation Minis have much of the same charm with a friendlier infotainment interface, and you can even get them with manual transmissions if that’s your preference.

Logan K. Carter/ Jalopnik