Mini 3D Hatch vs Mercedes-Benz A200

What's the difference?

Coincidence is a funny thing. The same week I had the Mini Cooper S 60 Years, the last VW Beetle rolled down the line in Mexico. VW blamed its mammoth €25bn investment in electric, but the reality is that nobody was buying that nostalgia trip anymore.

The story of Mini is quite different. BMW's aggressive expansion of the range beyond the three-door hatch has breathed all sorts of life into a brand that could have disappeared up its own Union Jack. Instead of sticking to the formula, the brand tried all sorts of things but has since settled on the hatch (three- and five-door), the Cabrio, the wacky Clubman semi-wagon and the Countryman SUV. BMW is now making lots of cars on the same platform, a nice two way street.

The Mini Cooper S is 60 years old and unlike the Beetle, it's powering on past its birthday and the company - no stranger to a special edition - has slapped together a classic combo of colours, stripes and badges.

Meet the world’s most aerodynamically efficient passenger car. Mercedes-Benz says the drag co-efficient for this new sedan version of its fourth-generation A-Class is the lowest ever measured for a passenger vehicle.

Which is quite a claim, but you only have to look at it to see how much work has gone into marrying good looks with slippery aero performance.

The A-Class sedan is substantially longer and fractionally taller than its hatchback sibling, but does that mean it’s better, or simply different?