It's raining in Coconut Creek, Florida. Hard. The kind of rain that shows up as a big purple blob on satellite weather maps. The kind that makes the inside of your car sound as if you're taking flak in a WWII fighter plane. The kind that wakes windshield-wiper manufactures in the middle of the night. I'm not sure if this is a terrible day to test out MINI's new sport ute the Cooper Paceman or the best day possible. I mean, the Paceman is supposed to be sort of an SUV-type thing, so a little (okay, a lot) of rain should be a good thing, right? I guess we'll find out.
For those who don't know, the Cooper Paceman is a two-door MINI representing their second foray into the world of higher ground clearance. And, apart from the two-door vs four-door setup, it's not that different from their first, the MINI Countryman, at least on paper.
They both come in non-S, S and John Cooper Works variations. They both come with MINI's ALL4 all-wheel-drive system as an option. They both have 102.2 inch wheelbases. They both have an interior center accessory rail with wacky LED color-change lighting. You get the picture.
I've driven the Countryman in pretty much every variation out there, non-S, S, JCW, whatever. It's pretty good. In the case of the JCW ALL4, it's great. So, is the Paceman good enough or different enough from the Countryman for MINI to justify adding another car to, what some consider to be, an already bloated line? Is there anything more to the Paceman than what is on paper? That's what I'm standing in this absurd amount of rain to find out.
The vehicle before me is a front-wheel-drive Light White 2013 MINI Cooper S Paceman (or Paceman S). I didn't know you could get lighter than white, but whatever. It's an S, so that means this particular Paceman has a turbocharged 1.6 liter inline four-cylinder engine good for 181 horse and 177 pound-feet of torque. This is the same engine MINI puts in all of their S-level cars. It's incredibly efficient (29 mpg combined) and usually provides enough power to have a little fun. In the case of the Paceman S, it will propel the mini-SUV to 60 mph in 7.0 seconds with a six-speed manual and 7.4 with a six-speed auto and hit a top speed of 128 mph. This one has a six-speed auto trans with adorable little paddles behind the three-spoke steering wheel and a shift lever that looks like a helmet.
