2023 Subaru BRZ vs 2022 Mini Cooper

What's the difference?

It’s an increasingly rare combination. An affordable sports car with a naturally aspirated engine in the front, driving the rear wheels through a manual gearbox. 

In the not-too-distant future enthusiast drivers will be talking about the good old days when the second-generation Subaru BRZ was sitting new in showrooms with a sub-$45K price sticker on the windscreen.

And maybe this BRZ S manual represents your last chance to acquire a mainstream performance-focused combustion car offering such a pure experience behind the wheel.  

It’s roughly 12 months since Subaru launched the current BRZ in Australia, well ahead of its Toyota GR86 twin, with the first 500 examples selling in the blink of an eye.

So, now that the dust has settled, and a relatively modest price rise from earlier in the year has been bedded down, it’s time to catch up with Subaru’s in-demand two-door.    

Can it really be eight years since we first lay eyes on the current-shape Mini – and 20 seasons since the BMW-led brand revival burst onto the scene?

With much input from now-defunct Rover, the 2001 R50 was all about reinvention, attitude, fashion and athleticism for the new millennium. These also defined the two following generations (R56 of 2006 and F56 of 2013), along with stingy equipment levels and laughably high-priced options. On-paper value-for-money was never a Mini strong suit.

But fads come and fads go, and by early 2021, BMW seemed to have finally realised that Mini fans are ageing and the market is changing, as reflected in the ever-smaller pool of city cars and superminis. The days of looking cool at the wheel of this retro icon are long gone.  

Result? A couple of years into the F56’s facelift – which itself brought a long list of improvements to help keep the old show-pony fresh – BMW has ushered in another round of updates, streamlining the way you buy a Mini in the process via – shock, horror! – ‘free’ specification packages.

We take a look at the popular Cooper 3DR Hatch Classic Plus to see if the Mini’s still got it for 2022.