MINI One

As a rule, modern remakes of old classics are flops. Take that bastion of British TV comedy, Fawlty Towers, for example. At the height of the show's success in the Seventies, US networks were interested in developing a Stateside version.

Auto Express Car Reviews

By Lesley Harris

February 2003

As a rule, modern remakes of old classics are flops. Take that bastion of British TV comedy, Fawlty Towers, for example. At the height of the show's success in the Seventies, US networks were interested in developing a Stateside version.
But having bought the scripts and agreed the licensing, they decided that one character was surplus and deleted him from the final rewrite. The casualty? Basil Fawlty. Unsurprisingly, the pilot show bombed and the series was canned.
Although motoring remakes have fared a little better over the years - think Volkswagen's Beetle - borrowing from the past can still be a risk for designers. The MINI, however, is an object lesson in how to do it properly. Even now, two years after its launch, it still turns heads.
While the Cooper S has stolen the limelight recently, the car, in all its forms, continues to enchant. Which is one of the reasons why we'll be running an entry-level MINI One over the next six months. After all, if a car is great in basic form, it's usually a hint to quality further up the range. Early impressions suggest that our tenure is going to fly past. Our car arrived with a little more than 2,000 miles on the clock, and we're well on the way to sticking another 1,000 on top of that. In terms of looks, our MINI is an unusual combination. I haven't seen many other takers for what the manufacturer optimistically describes as Velvet red - while even fewer have chosen to combine it with 17-inch wheels. However, having learned to drive in a mud-brown 1972 Mini with tiny 10-inch alloys, the feeling of d