Paul Smith is the closest thing Britain has to Ralph Lauren, and over the years he's lent his name and iconic stripes to more than one version of the MINI. The latest is this: the all-electric MINI Cooper, reworked as the Paul Smith Edition. It's the sort of car that only makes sense if you accept up front that you're buying a mood as much as a mode of transport. The good news is that the mood is a genuinely lovely one. The less good news is that the engineering underneath still has a couple of rough edges MINI hasn't smoothed out, and at roughly $63,000, those edges matter.
Let's get the shape of this MINI clear first. This is the electric Cooper, single motor driving the front wheels, 160kW and 330Nm, 0-100km/h in 6.7 seconds. The battery is 54.2kWh gross, 48.2kWh usable, good for up to 400km on the WLTP cycle. Charging tops out at 11kW on AC and 95kW on DC, which means a claimed 10-80% DC top-up in around half an hour, or a full AC charge in about five and a quarter hours. Those are city-car numbers, and that's exactly what this car is. Ask more of it, and it'll start to grumble.
Design & exterior
This is where the Paul Smith Edition earns its stripes. The colour scheme genuinely pops. This one is Inspired White, an off-white that reads as tasteful rather than clinical, topped with a Nottingham Green roof and matching accents. It's a combination that looks expensive without shouting, which is precisely the trick Smith has spent a career pulling off in menswear. There are other options - Statement Grey, Midnight Black II, a jet black roof with matte stripes - but the green-on-white is the one that makes people look twice.
The details are where the collaboration lives. There's a Paul Smith tailgate badge, "hello" projected puddle lights, door sill inlays, and a signature black band rendered in a black-and-blue recycled maritime material. It's all a bit twee written down, but in the metal it's cohesive and well judged. The car sits on 18-inch Night Flash multi-spoke alloys in black and dark steel, and they do a lot for the stance. This Cooper looks planted and purposeful.
Those wheels, though, are also part of the problem, and we'll come back to them.
The LED headlights are excellent. Vision on both city and rural roads is genuinely good, and the customisable daytime running lights are a nice touch that suits the car's personalisation theme.
Interior & technology
Inside, MINI has committed hard to the concept. The dashboard and door cards are recycled polyester knit fabric with a grey stripe pattern, and the Nightshade Blue seats carry the theme through. Positive affirmations and a personal greeting are stitched and printed around the cabin. Whether that delights you or makes you roll your eyes will depend entirely on your tolerance for whimsy. I found it charming, mostly because it's done with a light hand.
The front seats are the standout. These are supportive John Cooper Works buckets, fully electric with heating for both driver and passenger, and the driver's chair adds massage and memory functions. They're genuinely good seats. The catch is that everything they give the front occupants, they take from the back. Rear-seat room is tight. Anyone over average height sitting behind a tall driver will be negotiating for knee space. This is a two-plus-two in the honest sense, and the boot follows the same logic - compromised by the battery packaging, though there's at least some useful under-floor storage to claw a little practicality back.
Technology is a mixed bag. At the centre of the dash is MINI's 240mm circular OLED display, and it's a striking piece of design. The problem is that it's trying to do too much. There are almost too many options buried in it, and it doesn't use the surface area of the circle intelligently - run Apple CarPlay or Android Auto (both wireless, thankfully), and you get a square floating in a round screen, with dead space around it. It's form winning an argument it should have lost to function.
Then there's the head-up display. It's a 50mm pop-up plastic panel rather than a proper windscreen projection, and it's simply not big enough to be useful. I kept finding myself glancing at the central display for information the HUD should have shown me, which defeats the point of having one. For a car at this price, with a 10-speaker 315-watt Harman Kardon system, a panoramic glass roof and a 360-degree parking camera all present and accounted for, the HUD feels like a cut corner.
Performance & driving experience
Here's the thing MINI still does better than almost anyone: the steering. It's very direct, and it rewards you the more you trust it. The first ten minutes you'll think it's nervous. By the end of a good drive you'll be flicking the car into corners and grinning. That go-kart character MINI trades on is real, and the electric Cooper hasn't lost it despite carrying a battery under the floor. I followed this test with the BMW M135, and the MINI's steering somehow felt more connected.
The 160kW/330Nm electric motor outputs are more than enough for a car this size. It's brisk off the line, eager in the mid-range, and the instant electric torque suits the darty personality. Around town it's a genuinely fun little thing.
But - and it's a real but - this car should be rear-wheel drive. Sending 330Nm through the front wheels in a car this light and this eager creates torque steer that is, in the wet, genuinely alarming. Plant the throttle out of a damp roundabout, and you'll feel the wheel tug and the nose scrabble for grip. It's the single biggest dynamic flaw here, and it's the kind of thing that would simply disappear with a rear motor. MINI knows how to build a car that puts its power down cleanly. This isn't it.
Then there's the ride. On those handsome 18-inch wheels, the suspension doesn't hold up its end of the bargain in town. It's firm to the point of being fidgety over Sydney's patched-up roads and expansion joints. On a smooth country road it settles, and the trade-off starts to make sense, but a city car should be at its best in the city, and this one is at its most compromised there. You buy a small EV to make urban life easier. The ride quality works against that brief.
Safety
The safety sheet is thorough and reads exactly as you'd expect from a BMW Group product. Autonomous emergency braking, blind spot and lane change warning, rear cross traffic alert with brake intervention, an attentiveness assistant, high beam assist, exit warning, rear collision prevention, tyre pressure monitoring and intelligent emergency call are all standard. The Edition spec adds adaptive cruise control and a steering and lane control assistant, plus Parking Assistant Plus with a high-quality 360-degree surround view that's genuinely helpful when you're threading this into a tight Neutral Bay parking spot. There's a full airbag count: front, side and head, though it's worth noting the convertible in the range drops the head airbags - not relevant to this electric hatch, but worth knowing if you're cross-shopping the family.
Value & verdict
So, is the MINI Cooper Electric Paul Smith Edition worth $63,000? That's the real question, and it's a genuinely close call.
What you're getting is a very well-built, generously specified city EV with real character, a design collaboration that actually works, and the best steering in its class. It's charming in a way that the tidal wave of homogeneous Chinese boxes flooding (and undercutting) the Light segment simply can't match. The MINI Cooper is the elder statesman in this segment where, apart from the Audi A1, the aging Volkswagen Polo, and Hyundai i20, the rest are pretty forgettable. if you've sat in a few anonymous EVs and felt nothing, the MINI will remind you that a car can have a personality without being childish.
However, what you're not getting is a fully cooked meal. The range is honest-to-goodness fine for a city car, but another 50km in the tank would move it from "adequate" to "relaxed", and at this money you want relaxed. The front-drive torque steer is a serious quibble, and the firm ride undercuts the exact use case the car is built for. The head-up display and the busy circular screen are the kind of details that could nag at you - or you might accept them and move on.
Here's where I land. If you're shopping around the $63,000 mark for an EV and you want one with actual soul, this is a properly compelling alternative to the "bland brigade". It looks superb, it's built to last, and it's a genuine driver's car in a segment that mostly forgot what that means. Just go in with your eyes open about the range and the ride.
Fix those two things - and give it the rear-wheel drive it deserves - and MINI would have a small EV with almost no rivals. As it stands, it's a stylish car that loves to stretch its legs, held back by a couple of decisions it's high time MINI reconsidered.