ampersand

Mini Cooper, Maximum Annoyance

A few weeks ago, I booked a Mini for a trip to IKEA and to pick up a package in one of the outerlying suburbs. The Mini is a beloved car, with quite a bit of cachet with hipsters and people trying to be cool (while also pretending they haven’t fallen prey to its brilliant marketing campaign). And like many things beloved by hipsters, to me it left quite a bit to be desired.

Yes, the outside of the Mini is cute and retro cool. But once you climb inside, it feels like the walls are closing in on you. I’m 5’4″, and felt like there was no headroom in the vehicle. The seats were comfortable enough, and easy to adjust. I went to start my journey, but the push-button ignition was not as simple as it appeared. In fact, it took me ten minutes to figure out how to get the car running. And that was just the beginning of the counter-intuitive controls in the Mini.

The power window controls in the car are buried beneath the radio, in an oddly-designed panel. There were other controls in that little area, but I didn’t figure out what they did. I hated the centre-mounted spedometer. Who wants to broadcast their exact speed to everyone in a car? It really seemed like an odd place to put it. I know it’s a callback to the original Mini, but it felt like a real waste of space.

Speaking of space, I was pleased with how much you could fit in the Mini. I had three of those giant blue IKEA bags full of stuff, plus a couple of the largest RIBBA frames, and I still had space to spare. The rear seats are also a breeze to pull down.

As for the driving experience, Mini again does not earn top marks from me. The Mazda 3 still holds the highest spot in all the Zipcars I’ve driven in terms of pickup and zip. In stop and go traffic, the Mini was ridiculously jerky. And I’ve got enough jerks to deal with already in my life, I wouldn’t want to have to deal with it in a car too.

Add to that a premium price to book a Mini with Zipcar, it’s enough to make me choose almost any other vehicle in the Zipcar lineup over booking the Mini again.

Es-cap-ay!

I am lucky enough to work at a company that has summer hours. Which means that as of 1 pm on Friday, the weekend begins. This past Friday, the weekend began with a trip to IKEA. Alongside my friend Rachel, we hopped in a Ford Escape and headed for the wilds of North York.

Accessing the Zipcars was a bit of an ordeal. The Escape was parked in a very non-descript Midtown parking garage that didn’t seem to be attached to a building. To get in, we walked down the ramp and stood on the cable cars must drive over to gain access.

The garage was nearly empty, so finding the Escape was no challenge. We hopped in and hit the road.

I learned to drive in an SUV, so being up high enough to REALLY see traffic was a welcome memory. I think that the improved sight might be one of the myriad reasons SUVs are (were?) such strong sellers. It’s a much better vantage point than a car.

Something that took getting used to? The turning radius. The Escape is incapable of making hairpin turns, as expected. I forgot how cumbersome even a small SUV can be when facing city traffic. I missed the confident zip of the Mazda 3.

Of course, SUVs are hailed for their cargo space. And that’s why we took the Escape on this journey. I was surprised to find, then, that the MALM headboard I’d purchased barely fit in the back of Escape, with both seats folded completely flat. I’ll have to double check, but I think the Mazda 3 could have handled the MALM.

Didn’t get a chance to take Escape on the highway. Instead, we piloted through construction-plagued city streets, including “oh my god are we gonna fit” one way streets lined with parked cars.

Overall, the Escape was all right. Not terrible, not awesome. It doesn’t particularly correspond to my lifestyle, and I think that’s an important lesson to learn — I’d been considering a Chevrolet Equinox, and now I know an SUV is just too much vehicle for how I live my life.

Next trip to IKEA, I think I want to try a station wagon. But the next Zipcar confessional will be about the ubiquitous Honda Civic.

Zoom Zoom Zoom

During my second-ever Zipcar outing today, I thought I would start taking notes on my opinion of every vehicle I have the opportunity to drive. Because I think that’s my favorite thing about the service: the chance to drive a LOT of different cars.

Seriously, I could spend entire weekends test driving. It’s like how I am about apartments, except I’m imagining how different my life would be if I drove a Mini, or a VW. Today’s car is a Mazda 3. I didn’t notice its trim level, something I’m slapping my hand for. Bad automotive copywriter!

ANYWAY, the Mazda 3. Zipcar calls it Megaboom. I call it a BLAST to drive. Well, once I figured out now not to be in the vehicle’s Sport mode. That made some unhappy sounds. But, once I (quickly) figured out where D was, it was green lights all the way.

I guess the Sport mode transmission is a plus for people who like to shift, but as a major supporter of the automatic transmission, it didn’t matter a whit to me. I care about things like the radio, how fast the a/c cools the car, what I can haul around in it and whether it has any pickup on the highway.

So, the radio was pretty cool. It says hello to you when you turn on the car. The volume control is a knob dead in the centre of the dash, and there are a number of ways to access the radio presets. Satellite radio is also an option on this vehicle, but not on sweet little Megaboom. A feature I didn’t get to try out in my two hour window was the 6-disc in dash changer. But I love the idea of that. I’ve had experience with trunk-mounted changers, and they’re a pain in my butt. Plus, they reduce the amount of crap I can get in a single trip to IKEA.

The air conditioning earned points. BIG points. I spent much of today wandering the streets of my fair city, so the fact that the car was cool in mere moments was a welcome one.

The ride was smooth and quiet. Megaboom drove like a dream, accelerating with confidence and braking without complaint. On winding roads, it handled exceptionally well. The same cannot be said for the out of service city bus that almost toppled over while racing into a curve going at least 70 km/h in the lane beside mine.

There wasn’t much chance to take the car on the highway, but the five minutes I was on North America’s busiest highway were a breeze. Thank God for no traffic.

Now, the bad parts. At IKEA, I parked in a huge carport-style parking structure. One that didn’t have its lights on yet. And, the interior light in the Mazda 3 is not particularly bright. Or positioned in a way where you can look for something on the vehicle floor.  Which made looking for the trunk release ridiculously hard.

After 10 minutes (which included consulting the inch-thick owner’s manual), I located the trunk release and got everything into the car.

Overall, it was a fun car to drive. I’m sure Megaboom and I will be hanging out again soon, but my plan is to test out the rest of the vehicles near my place. I’ve already driven the VW Jetta City near me, but I’ll have to drive it again in order to review it. The other vehicles are a Mini Cooper, a Ford Escape, a Toyota Matrix and a Honda Civic. After that, perhaps I’ll branch out into other areas of the city.

Overall Mazda 3 Grade: B+