Rating
Quick Summary
Recommended. Spain and Germany collide to make a car that's both emotional and precision engineered. It faces stiff competition from both Volkswagen and Skoda's Up! And Citigo respectively, but is it different enough to peel sales from them?
Road Test
So you want a new small car for shopping, taking the kids from A-B or your university-bound child. It has to be safe, cheap to buy, easy to run and still be spacious enough for lots of stuff. A tall order for most cars - interiors are shrinking as EU regulations demand more and more safety kit be piled into every crevice. Thankfully, SEAT has found a way to ensure you can still have plenty of airbags and space to store your phone.
The interior is pretty roomy, there's easily more space in the front footwells than a Ford Focus. In the back there's plenty of space if your driver isn't 9ft tall and the seats are pretty comfy as well. Keeping that in mind, when you look at the Mii's front seats they don't look like much, but are incredibly supportive. The room is complimented by incredible visibility - the side windows are huge and the rear window seems bigger than most bigger hatches.
Don't expect a 'luxury' interior for your money. Body-coloured paint extends inside, the dash comes with a variety of trim flavours: cheap and nasty for the S, glossy and smooth for the SE and shiny white for the Sport model. You can have pretty much any gadget you want in there, too. The highlight being the SEAT Portable Navigation system that runs your MP3 player, phone and navigation from its dash mount. You can detach it and hide it away when you reach your destination, too. It is slow to respond at times, like a sleeping teenager after a night on the hooch.
Luggage space isn't a problem thanks to the Mii's smart split-level boot. You can either have a shallow boot with a cubbyhole below, or a gap capable of fitting two weekend suitcases with ease. There's 251-litres of space in there, more than some larger rivals. Very impressive.
Being a city car first and foremost means the Mii comes with two engines, both of which are tiny. Well, it comes with one engine in two states of tune - 60 & 75PS respectively.
Neither is going to rip your face off on the 0-62mph dash, and why should they?
The Mii's job is to get you around town as best it can and that means you don't need rip roaring performance. Thankfully, both come with low CO2 outputs - 105 and 108g/km. This means low road tax. Combine that with light weight and you end up with wallet-friendly fuel consumption, too. If aural pleasure is your thing, the 3-cylinder soundtrack will certainly please.
Handling is pretty good, too. Yes, the suspension is a touch wobbly, but that's to be expected from a city car. The pedals are pretty light, too, though the clutch can feel a touch too floaty. All in all, the Mii is a cracking little car. Is it better than the Up! and Citigo? It's pretty much the same - you'll buy this for the badge and its low price (it'll start from £7,500 from launch next year).
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