Fenimore was in for service today. Inspection, cabin air filter, and so on. They gave me a loaner--a Cooper S Coupe with an automatic transmission. It was a dark gray, possibly the High Class Gray? With a black top.

Once again, the loaner tells me that I made the right choice in getting Fenimore the way I wanted him!

I did not care for the Coupe from the inside at all. There is less headroom than in the Hardtop, even with the seat all the way down! I barely had an inch of headroom in the Coupe, while I have a good bit more in Fenimore. The height also put me up where the rear side windows are absolutely useless! Most especially the one on the driver's side. The C pillars are huge, and create very significant blind spots. The rear window is small, appears even smaller in the rear view mirror, and loses 1/3 of its view when the spoiler deploys! One of the things I like about my car is the all-around visibility, and the Coupe simply doesn't have it for me.

The black roof and anthracite headliner combined to radiate a significant amount of heat down on my head. It made me grateful for the white roof and off-white headliner in my car.

The automatic transmission sapped a significant amount of the fun factor from the driving experience, at least for me. This car did feel faster than my base manual, but not as much as the difference in power ratings would seem to show. The auto was also very insistent on having its way; downshifts were laggy and it would shift back up rather sooner than I wanted it to. But at least I didn't have to worry about rev-matching downshifts, or with my left foot getting out of sync with my right hand...

I was quite happy to get back into my own car. I really do believe that I picked the right combination of items for me.