Ray Leathern has driven the new MINI Coupé and reckons it’s the MINI-est MINI you can buy and, that if you squint long enough, it comes closest to capturing the spirit of the 60’s original.

I don’t think anyone in the car trade has been as successful, in the last decade, in forging a healthily brazen, brand identity as MINI have. Perhaps estate agents have gone some ways to ruining it for everybody and, try as they might, even MINI haven’t actually ruined it yet with the Clubman and Countryman; MINI’s are still as crisp and desirable as a cold can of Coke Light or the latest iPod-Blackberry-Nano-Galaxy-Shuffle-Tablet thingy.

A lot of the conjecture around the new MINI Coupé however, seems to circle around whether it’s a ‘proper MINI,’ whatever that means, i.e. whether it isn’t a sort of, bastardised, two-seater afterbirth of the hatchback. I do happen to believe however, that the Coupé is actually more MINI than the other four that have come before it.

Don’t ever forget that the modern MINI we all think of today was actually gifted to us out of political and economic recrimination a decade and a half ago. Forget Sir Alec Issigonis and 1959. In 1994, BMW’s takeover of the British Rover Group was something akin to a conquest of the mid-Atlantic island. BMW held control for six years and in that time, chopped the company up into the three parts and ‘nicked’ all the things they needed for new projects. Think X5, before selling Land Rover to Ford and giving away a destitute Rover / MG back to previous management for a tenner (no really, £10).

BMW of course held onto MINI and in 1995, Frank Stephenson, of McLaren MP4-12C fame, to name but one, won the right to pen the marques iconic return. The original, new MINI of 2001 was wider, taller and longer than the 60’s original and, at the time, rather quaintly, BMW pinned that fact on average Europeans being 50 mm taller than they were in 1960. The real reason the new MINI was bigger was because it had to meet new safety legislation. However, despite the larger visual presence, it was actually still a brilliantly compact little car as we all know.

That was the easy part, but you can’t just rely on a product portfolio of one, now can you? So since then, BMW have ventured into four-door and three-door MINI’s, convertibles, hot JCW versions, the MINI E electric car for the future and now the two door, two seater Coupe and the Roadster that will be arriving early in 2012. All in a decades work for a German company with a great British brand to cultivate I guess.

In getting acquainted with the new 2011 MINI Coupé, I have to say, it stunned me how accomplished the Cooper Coupé model is as a driving tool, over even the normal Cooper hatchback, which is already a real cracker jack of a car to drive and live with. I know that’s perhaps akin to admitting you enjoy a good ‘soapie’ every now and then…, but it’s true. MINI’s new addition to its model lineup is smaller, racier and bizarrely you may think, just as practical from a luggage capacity point of view as the hatchback. It’s as if MINI have said: “Look, no one ever bought the hatchback for practicality, we’ll ditch the rear seats, leave you just as much stowage space and now you can have a proper small, dynamic MINI to enjoy.”

The MINI Cooper Coupé, to use its full name delineation, in extra-hot, JCW specification – sports 155 kW and 280 Nm from its 1.6-litre turbo charged engine, which will tackle 100 km/h in 6.4 seconds. This makes it the fastest production MINI out there and faster than the hatchbacks, naturally. At launch we had access to the 135 kW and 260 Nm Cooper S Coupé and the normal, non-turbo, 90 kW and 160 Nm, Cooper Coupé. The S gets to 100 km/h in 6.9 seconds, which is plenty quick enough in the little shoebox of a car, while the non-turbo gets there in 9 seconds and is just as dynamic to pilot around twisty roads even without the bristling power output. Then we had the chance to drive the MINI Cooper S Coupé at Killarney Raceway and it behaves like a proper little charmer out on track, let me tell you. I’d argue the difference in handling and dynamic performance between the Coupe and a hatchback is noticeable. I certainly was beaming from ear to ear.

Oddly though, the Coupé’s power to weight ratio is actually less than the hatchback. The Coupé weighs 25 kg more than the equivalent hatch and this is due to it being stiffened and reinforced as you’d find on a convertible version over a normal hatchback. Why? We don’t know… but we suspect it has something to do with the fact that the Coupé, and this was refuted vehemently by MINI, is in actual fact a Roadster with a baseball cap thrown on top, and not the other way round as they claim. Not a bespoke Coupé that will have its head chopped off in the Roadster, if you will… whatever, but it is lower to the ground than the hatchback and with a shorter wheelbase that delivers a totally flat and planted attitude that just laps up the racetrack.

With MacPherson struts at the front and MINI’s ‘centrally guided’ rear axle at the back, the Coupé is as good as it gets in terms of handling for a front wheel drive vehicle. The amount of smile inducing, but actually quite benign and totally controllable, lift-off oversteer this MINI Coupe delivers, beggars belief. You’re left in no doubt after a few hot laps that this little Coupe wants to be a tail happy BMW 1 M Coupe in its next life. With a flick of the Sport button in the centre dash – engine mapping and the electro servo steering can be sharpened up, and a three way Dynamic Stability Control (DSC) system lets you give full vent to your inner hooligan.

The DTC, or ‘half off’ function on DSC is probably best for testing the Coupé’s limits on-road, but on-track; it has to be turned all the way off. The Coupé will of course deliver much torque steer in first and second gear and much wild understeer depending on how relentless you are with the throttle; until you lift-off that is, and then the back eagerly wants to meet the front for a little strategy session. So often a sporty, little chassis feels like it could handle loads more power, but this MINI Cooper S Coupé feels like it can just about cope, and that’s a fun feeling, along with the eager drivetrain that pulls you along like a big dog on a short leash. Every night would be a big night out if it were up to this MINI Cooper S Coupé, it leaves nothing back in the pits.

On the looks front, I’m sure the clunky, bottom heavy, MINI Coupé, with honeycomb grills and cross trainer stripes everywhere, will elicit a world of loudly voiced opinion either for or against it. But we have to say that, almost begrudgingly, after spending enough time with it, we’d developed an affinity for its aggressive, no nonsense and vulgar ways.

What strikes me most about the MINI brand, is its sense of ever-presence, especially incarnated here again in the Coupé (and the Roadster to follow in 2012). Such is the way with fashion items that possess longevity, they’ve achieved it with reinvention over the decades and its kept any MINI fresh enough so as not to strike it off the motoring A-list. I believe that to be an incredibly difficult and thoroughly commendable achievement, and the MINI Coupe does that for the brand. I would like to see and drive the Roadster before I lay my money down for the Coupé, just to make sure it isn’t a marketing caveat to the open topped version coming in 2012.

Prices include a 5-year/100 000 warranty.