Take two cars sitting on different platforms, power one with pistons and the other with an e-motor, build them on opposite sides of the planet and guess what? They’re going to be quite different. It would take some sort of spooky conjuring trick to make them feel alike. And if you drive the petrol Mini Cooper S back-to-back with the electric Cooper SE, like we did last year, you will see just how big that difference can be.
To drive, those two cars were so unlike you’d swear their development teams had never met. One was sparky, lively, agile and fun, the other leaden, flat-footed and forgettable – and there are no prizes for guessing which was which. For all that those Mini variants appear indistinguishable inside and out, it turns out the similarities only run skin deep. The petrol car, codenamed F66, is built in the UK and sits on one platform, while the electric one, called J01, is manufactured in China and sits on another. They look alike, but they’re not blood relatives at all.
So why bother comparing these new petrol and electric versions, the range-topping John Cooper Works machines, when there’s nothing to suggest the outcome will be any different? Because now, and to nobody’s greater surprise than my own, the battery-powered and ICE models feel almost like identical twins, powertrains aside. It’s that conjuring trick made real. But there’s a problem. The electric John Cooper Works may well do a very convincing impression of the petrol one, but in many ways it would be better if it did not.
