Build your Mini Cooper Hardtop

We suspect that your initial inclination upon the discovery of a new model's configurator is to throw gobs and gobs of equipment at a car to see just how high the price will go. After all, that's what we tend to do.

It's especially satisfying with German automakers — notably Porsche and BMW — who seem to have turned option pricing into something bordering on absurdist theatre. And for all its protestations of Britishness, Mini is, of course, the unit of a German automaker bent on maximizing profit.

So yes, the basic Cooper starts at $20,745 (including a $795 destination charge). But load up the interior with connectivity, dispense with the manual transmission, tart up the exterior, heat/dim the glass, add a spot of displacement and performance-oriented suspension? We did just that and wound up with a Cooper S for which Mini will ask a rather heady $37,495. (For the record, if the author were building a Cooper S for himself, the tally would be a mere $34,345.)

That, chums, is a pricey wee pasty.

By Davey G. Johnson