well
the Cooper S gets cheap HP cuz of the supercharger.... the regular Cooper have a crappy chrysler engine thats not efficient at all. the cheapest Cooper doesnt have nearly all the features i have in the Echo RS.

I have friends that have the current Echo RS, Cooper and Cooper S.

the build quality and material used on the Mini is definatly better. but reliability sucks. also the Cooper felt pretty bad compare to the Echo, power and smoothness wise.

the Cooper S is another league. with that amount of money, my Echo would be fully modded with Turbo or S/C already. which would be even faster.