The Mini eMastered
A non-BMW-made electric Mini that feels like the 60s icon, without all the technical flaws
When people around the world buy a Mini, a part of them probably feels it’s a rather stylish, Anglophile statement. After all, Minis were one of the emblems of the Swinging London of the 1960s, when the Beatles, Twiggy, Mick Jagger, and so forth would scoot around Carnaby Street and the Kings Road in the little cars. Three souped-up Mini Coopers—the sports version of the Mini—were co-stars of the 1969 British heist movie The Italian Job, alongside Michael Caine and Noël Coward.
The boxy, British-designed-and-built Mini—10 feet long, with a tiny wheel at each corner—was a massive seller between 1959 and 2000. It was even a niche seller in the U.S. until 1967, when tighter safety standards made it impractical to import.
But the bigger, fatter models that pass for a Mini today are more Brit-ish than British. The brand is owned by BMW, and the newer, expanded Minis, in terms of quality and comfort, have a distinctly German feel. The original, British Mini, produced by a chronically troubled automaker, was never very well built. Your columnist owned several, and none was reliable, especially the brand-new one that caught fire on the highway in its first week.
Restored original Minis are still much loved, however, in the U.K. and, particularly, in Japan. The modern Mini is a fine car, but doesn’t quite replicate the exciting, scampering, road-clinging—not to say bumpy—ride of the original.
Recognizing the enduring love for the classic Mini, a British company, David Brown Automotive, which specializes in building modern versions of historic cars, is now launching a fully electric classic Mini. (Coincidentally, David Brown shares a name with the man who once owned Aston Martin and lent his initials to the model driven by James Bond: the DB5.) Although their Mini eMastered is a hand-built new car rather than a modernized vehicle built into a vintage shell, it counts for official purposes as a classic, so it is shipping to the United States, which is, in fact, its intended primary market.
We have been driving the Mini eMastered around London, and not only is it huge fun but it is built to an exceptional standard. You can almost think of it as a tiny Bentley, with leather everywhere and controls in a wonderful knurled and etched aluminum, and there’s every electronic gadget you can think of on board, from keyless start-stop to four-speaker surround sound and a Pioneer infotainment system. Bear in mind, the original Mini didn’t even have a heater, a radio, or wind-down windows—you had to slide them up and down by hand.
The eMastered ride is true to the original, but, being electric, it’s even faster, and its limpet-like grip on the road (and bumpiness) bring one back to 1967, in a good way. Old Minis were not quiet, and the eMastered is louder than most electric cars, but few will find its slightly whiny motor anything other than quirky.
It is very much a city car, with just a 110-mile range, no gear options other than forward and reverse, and barely any trunk to speak of. But you can fit just about four people inside, and it will do up to 92 m.p.h. if you live in a city where that’s even possible.
David Brown, which takes customization requests if you want a nonstandard color scheme, also makes a gasoline classic Mini model for those for whom driving an electric car, range anxiety and all, is just too much of a headache.
On our London test drive, the car attracted the attention primarily of older locals, Japanese tourists, and small children—these last perhaps thinking it is almost identical to Mr. Bean’s car, which it is.
The price may be a barrier to all but those who really want to cut a dash in Manhattan or Beverly Hills. At around $159,000, it is more than 100 times the original cost of a mass-production Mini.
The Leica SL3 Camera
A digital camera that will make you shoot for the moon
The launch of a new Leica camera is as big an event as the unveiling of an Apple product, albeit in the rather smaller field of high-end cameras.
So it was that last month, a couple of hundred journalists, bloggers, and photographers were flown from around the world to Leica’s hometown of Wetzlar, Germany, near Frankfurt, to witness its new top-of-range digital camera, the SL3.
Put up in a new Leica hotel on the company campus, with a Leica restaurant and bar, a Leica museum, and a Leica-merchandise shop, selling everything from Leica coffee to Leica wine, we learned the new camera has been five years in the making.
It’s a little lighter and smaller than its predecessor, the SL2, and has a welcome tilting display to help photograph from a low angle without having to lie on the ground. The autofocus is extremely fast and accurate, the battery life is improved, and the operating system is greatly simplified. Its low-light ability is amazing—for the photo geeks among us, it works at up to 100,000 I.S.O., which makes it 250 times more light-sensitive than 400 I.S.O. Tri-X film. This means you can take usable photos in a dark room without windows.
Thankfully, there wasn’t any of the strange whooping that accompanies Apple launches at the SL3 unveiling. It was clear this was much more an evolution than a revolution. Nevertheless, there were professional photographers on hand who had tried the new camera and proclaimed it the best Leica ever and, in one case, the best camera ever.
Taking a sample SL3 onto the not-remotely-mean streets of Wetzlar, it was hard not to be reminded of the tail-wagging-the-dog phenomenon in photography: when you have a superb camera in your hands, you are inspired to at least try to take better photos, even if you don’t actually succeed. I came away with several technically breathtaking but artistically boring photos.
The SL3 may not be your thing. It’s not mine, even as a Leica lover and owner—it’s too big, too unwieldy. But, as one of the professional photographers with us said, using any Leica, but most notably the SL3, is a statement of intent that you are serious, and a reminder to raise your game.
New Yorkers wanting to try the SL3 and generally immerse themselves in the cult of Leica should know there’s a big new flagship Leica store in the Meatpacking District, near the Whitney, at 406 West 13th Street.
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold Laptop
A P.C. that makes up for a lack of intuitiveness with superb graphics
We generally prefer triumphs to tragedies, so it would be a pleasure to say that Lenovo, the Beijing company that makes more personal computers than any other manufacturer in the world, has produced the best and most innovative portable computer ever with the ThinkPad X1 Fold.
Theoretically, it is a world-beater. If you want a huge, unbelievably high-quality tablet that folds down to half its own size but also adapts into a high-specification laptop when you need it to, there is no rival to the X1 Fold. The 16-inch display is better than any iPad, and the folding mechanism is truly remarkable. The keyboard will delight IBM ThinkPad users from the heyday of the Clinton administration, with its original red nipple mouse peeking out from between the G and the H keys.
The problem is that the X1 Fold seems to have been designed by technical and mechanical geniuses who have zero flare for the aesthetic or ergonomic. Without detailed diagrams and extensive practice, it is impossible for a normal human being to change it from tablet to laptop. And, like almost every P.C., it is covered with hideous glued-on labels.
Unique as it is, the X1 Fold is what in British English is known as “a dog’s dinner.” In American English, it’s the kind of thing that the late Steve Jobs would have tossed out of a Cupertino window, closely followed by its designer.
Falebare 6S Bluetooth Headphones
Folding Bluetooth headphones so cheap you can afford to misplace them
A friend was due to go into a London hospital for a major operation and asked your columnist for a recommendation for decent over-ear wireless headphones. But they couldn’t be too expensive, as technology has a way of disappearing from patients’ bedside tables in hospitals. Oh, and could the headphones also be foldable, so she could travel with them once she’s recovered?
The sad truth is, folding over-ear cans are almost nonexistent among good brands. So the patient did her own research and spent a princely $16.99 on a Chinese pair from Amazon. In the U.K. they are called the Rebocico 6S. In the U.S. they appear as the Falebare 6S.
And—this will come as an embarrassment to audio snobs—they are not only good but quite nice-looking. They sound a bit mushy, but not many people will even notice. It’s also possible they won’t last for years.
Let’s not even try to imagine how it’s possible for a $17 product to be well made and for everyone in the supply chain to make a profit. Think of it as a modern miracle of sorts.
Based in London and New York, AIR MAIL’s tech columnist, Jonathan Margolis, spent more than two decades as a technology writer for the Financial Times. He is also the author of A Brief History of Tomorrow, a book on the history of futurology