Minneapolis, Minn – The MINI Cooper Convertible very well could be the first car that requires its owners sign a contract stipulating use. Use, as in that "all MINI Convertible owners sign a contract agreeing to motor with the top down at least 90 percent of an operating period". So we are told, anyway, before we embark on a Midwestern journey that will take us out of the Twin Cities' urban sprawl and onto a route that will cover nearly 250 miles of roadways -- large and small, congested and quiet -- winding through portions of eastern Minnesota to western Wisconsin, up and over the not-so-mighty Mississippi (it's still mostly narrow and patient, with gentle backwater spillways in its northern haunts, where it begins) and then back to the Twin Cities again for the evening.

As it turns out, for us the contract is frivolous. Driving the MINI Cooper Convertible is pure pleasure when the skies have dawned blue – especially when you’re expecting drizzle and gray.