Dan saunters through the showroom of Shropshire’s coolest car dealership.

He’s not wearing a tie, none of the salesmen are, and he’s dressed in open neck shirt and slacks. If moddish tunes were pumping from a loud stereo, for all the world we could be in one of London’s hippest night clubs.

When designers want to learn how to create the right ambience for car buying, they should take a trip to Rybrook MINI, in Shrewsbury’s Featherbed Lane.

Dan stops when he reaches the brand spanking new MINI Cooper S. It’s a John Cooper Works convertible. “Nice, eh?” He knows he’s onto a winner.

The vehicle is a beast. It’s finished in sleek black and the roof retracts with ease at the flick of a switch.

 See more pics of the MINI in our photo gallery below.

“You can open it on the move,” says Dan, laughing. “Though only at speeds of up to 20mph.” Great, I think, I’ll remember not to turn it into a kite while roaring down the A5.

The interior is as classy as the dining room of the Dorchester. It is utterly refined and finished in chocolate and cream leather.

It’s a sumptuous and beguiling interior, the sort that would be as much at home at a Mayfair nightclub, in the lounge of a BA VIP suite or parked beside the playing fields of Binfield Heath Polo Club.

But all of that is nothing compared to the what’s beneath the bonnet. Let’s forget the scientific facts and figures, even the most ardent petrol head doesn’t care a fig about Nm torque ratios.

So we’ll describe it thus.

It races from 0-62mph in a fraction under seven seconds, before reaching a top speed of 146mph. It’s acceleration, even in the middle range, is ferocious.

The Cooper S is the type of vehicle that will have you pushed back into the well of your seat, as the G force takes hold.

The engine has the sort of power that you’d expect in a low end Porsche, which is great, given that it’s in a smaller, lighter MINI.

There’s a delightful, F1-style gggrrrrr as the car powers from a start and it sticks to the road as though it’s life depended on it.

You feel as though powerful electro magnets have been fitted to the chassis and are connected by some 22nd century system to a magnetised road.

The John Cooper Works convertible is, quite simply, scintillating to drive.

The team that designed it were clearly fans of driving. They wanted to nip through corners in a style bordering on the illegal.

There are all the finer details that you’d expect of a 2009 MINI.

 There’s a push button stop/start system, the engine switches off at red traffic lights then starts again when you depress the clutch, the stereo is suitably powerful and the styling is marvellous.

It’s even reasonably economical, managing around 40mpg.

I read a review once saying all MINIs are equal. The critic who wrote it clearly hadn¹t banked on the John Cooper Works convertible. It is first among equals.

* Thanks to Dan Brookes at Rybrook Shrewsbury, in Featherbed Lane, for organising our test drive. For more details visit www.rybrookmini.co.uk or call (01743) 452350.

By Andy Richardson