David Brown Mini eMastered: the ultimate city car?

The eMastered’s body is deseamed and smoothed, which is a long-established Mini technique that doesn’t seem to bother the DVSA assessors. That the steering and suspension is original equipment gets the predominantly new eMastered back on the road with the numberplate that its donor supplied. To see it and look at it, though, it’s as shiny and new as any other new car.

Albeit much, much smaller. It’s easy to forget, given how rare a sight Minis are on the road these days, how dinky one is. It’s just 3.05m long and 1.4m wide.

And to think these things seat four. Or did, anyway. The makeover that DBA gives the interior includes not just a new dash and trim but also twiddly air vents and metal buttons, plus really lovely dials that fit the original spaces but which include battery charge state. There are also plusher front seats that you would be hard pushed to get people behind. Think of the rear seats as additional luggage space, although the rear battery is where the spare wheel would be, so the boot is still the original size.

Anyway, it’s probably more two- than four-seater, but given this level of makeover costs £150,000, most owners will have several something elses in the garage for serious journeys, so it doesn’t really matter. It also won’t matter that the batteries only total 19kWh, for a WLTP range of 110 miles or, as DBA tells customers so they’re never disappointed, 100 miles confidently. On a domestic wallbox, three hours would have it topped.

What this is, then, is a city runabout for the minted who have other things elsewhere. And on that front, it does exactly what you would want it to. With nearly 100bhp, it has a claimed 0-62mph time of 8.5sec. Driving the car exclusively in London, I didn’t get to test that, but it sounds pretty reasonable to me.

The nice thing, as with lots of EVs, is that bold smooth torque delivery from rest, and it’s very linear. Fellten says that the original throttle pedal is much like a switch, so this is way more graded and progressive. There’s predictable retardation too, with regeneration optimising the range and good brake pedal feel. Regular handbrake. Gearlever in the same position as usual, about the same height, but with just forward and reverse positions.

Otherwise, it drives much like I remember a classic Mini, as well it might because, given the battery size, it comes in at virtually the same weight as the original. As some people tell us, you can make an EV as light as an ICE car, but it means a small battery and most likely no fast charging.

Minis got a little heavier over the years, and various official bits of paperwork said they were anything between 580kg early on and 700kg towards the turn of the millennium. DBA claims a weight of 640kg for this one, which is very much naff all by modern standards, so it turns, steers and stops with the same sort of ease as most quadricycles, rather than cars.