2002 Mini Cooper S

It's a lot heavier than it looks. The new Mini Cooper S may be shorter than the 1,808-lb Geo Metro, but it weighs 2,678 lbs. That's more than a Toyota Celica GT-S or a Ford Focus. It's also way more than I can push. Although my Portuguese is limited to asking for beer and bathroom, Manuel and his two friends get the message and help.

It doesn't work.

An hour ago, this seemed like a good idea. We had only five hours to drive and photograph the new Mini Cooper S and it had been raining for days. We were starting to panic, but right before sunset, the clouds parted. That's when we saw, it. Our salvation. At the base of a cliff was a deserted beach with crashing surf, and quaint, Portuguese boardwalks. Even the Portuguese sky turned for the better, boiling with clouds and sun and purple Jesus light-just the stuff the camera loves.

"Let's shoot it on the beach," I say, as if it's an original idea.

"Yeah," says ace lensman Bidrawn, as if he'd never shot a car on a beach before. "It'll look great, you'll love it."

Note to self: Always bring at least one smart person on a photo shoot.

The Mini is small and low, but its wheels are shoved all the way to the corners, eliminating any overhang. This makes it surprisingly easy to bounce the little thing down the dirt road that leads to this picturesque Portuguese beach.

By the way, we're in Portugal, if you haven't already picked that up.

In Europe, the original Mini is an icon. Playing off this status, the new Mini, which has been on sale for several months, is already wildly successful there. Driving the car around the outskirts of Lisbon proved the impact of the Mini's curb appeal. Other drivers stare, children point, women swoon. Portuguese women. But you have to wonder how Americans, most of whom have probably never seen a Mini in person, will react.

Volkswagen may be able to offer a lesson here. In Europe, where the history of the original Beetle is far less pleasant than our own air-cooled memories of peace, love and weed, New Beetle sales are comparatively soft. Context is everything when you're selling nostalgia.

Luckily, the Mini Cooper S has a lot more going for it than nostalgia. It has a supercharger. An Eaton roots blower and a small, air-to-air intercooler cram a surprising 11.7 psi into the Mini's 1.6-liter iron block, resulting in a claimed 163 hp and 155 lb-ft of torque. Compression is down from 10.6:1 on the naturally aspirated Mini Cooper to a boost-friendly 8.3:1, suggesting to those of us with a penchant for overkill that far more boost is possible. Power below 2000 rpm is unexciting. Above 2000 rpm the blower is in its sweet spot. Midrange power is healthy, and the blower whine is intoxicating. Gearing is on the tall side, though, making power delivery a little more mature than we might hope for in our world where every traffic light is a drag race.

This gearing comes from the same Getrag six-speed used in the SVT Focus. The Getrag box uses a compact dual layshaft design that's critical to squeezing it into the Mini's tiny engine bay. Where a conventional six speed has an input and output shaft each with six gears, the Getrag box has two output shafts, with each input gear driving two differently sized output gears. This cuts the length of the shafts almost in half.