Mini Cooper Temperature Gauge

The average Mini Cooper offers you plenty of information through its onboard computer system. One thing you’ll find frustrating has to do with the Mini Cooper temperature gauge.

I’ll be the first to admit I am not the sharpest tool in the chest. Still, I felt pretty stupid a week after I had picked up my Mini Cooper “S”. It was a broiling August day in sunny San Diego and I was driving through the back roads behind Julian in what passes for mountain country around here. I started looking for the temperature gauge on the car and couldn’t find it. The car has lots of quirks, so this wasn’t necessarily a surprise.

Eventually, I actually had to pull over. I simply couldn’t find the gauge and had to give in to the ultimate male shame. Yes, I had to read the owners manual. I tried to hold it low so nobody could see it! After reading the manual for longer than I will ever admit, I still could not find the gauge or any information about it.

Eventually I got home and popped online. Guess what? I bet you can’t find the temperature gauge in your Mini either. You know why? There isn’t one! No…temperature…gauge. How odd is that? Your car could be on the edge of blowing up and you wouldn’t have a clue. Okay, the car is set up so the onboard engine control unit would start lighting up your dashboard like a Christmas tree, but still.

I love my Mini Cooper. Given all the boring cars on the road that look suspiciously like elongated eggs, I love the fact the Cooper has a bunch of weird little eccentric characteristics. The one thing I don’t love is the lack of a temperature gauge. It makes me nervous that I have to rely on the computer to tell me the car is overheating. Computers fail. After owning both a MG and a Jaguar, I have little trust in cars working the way they are supposed to.

I have to submit that the lack of a Mini Cooper temperature gauge is really one of the biggest design faults with the car. It is my hope it will never come back to haunt me or you while driving around out in the desert somewhere one day on a gloriously windy, open road!

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