Identity Crisis: Petrol v Electric Mini Cooper S

Do not be fooled. For all that these two Minis with their cutesy cartoon faces look like identical twins, to drive they’re so unalike they might as well come from opposite sides of the planet. And for reasons we will come to shortly, they do just that.

The Mini Cooper S is unique in the marketplace, being the only hot hatch that offers both petrol and electric powertrains. It therefore allows us to find out exactly what the key differences are between a performance hatchback that sucks, squeezes, bangs and blows its way along a road, and one that zips down it in silence. It’s all well and good speculating from afar on what those differences might be, but not until you get up close and personal with both does the complete picture emerge.

This is also a handy opportunity to learn something meaningful about the wave of EV hot hatches heading our way. Can such things really be as fun as the kind of hot hatch we’ve loved for decades? We know the challenges faced by all EVs – they’re comparatively heavy, their electric motors lack the excitement of a buzzy petrol engine, there are no gears to rifle through, they tend to cost a lot, soon enough you’ll need to tether them to the mains for a reasonable amount of time and so on.