David Linklater.

Never mind the Countryman’s Suv-size, just make sure yours has the quirky three-cylinder engine, says

Should we really be that worried about the newgeneration Mini getting bigger and bigger? In 17 years under BMW, Mini (or MINI as the German company nonsensically insists we write it, so we won’t) has grown in so many ways.

Mini is a noun, not an adjective. More so today than ever. As a brand, it’s going in all sorts of different directions.

The new Countryman SUV is the biggest Mini ever made. It’s actually longer and taller than a Mazda CX-3, so size-wise it’s very much in the mainstream of small SUVS.

The one real danger of a substantially upsized Mini like this is that it could lose some of the cheeky character that the brand is famous for.

In the world of the Countryman SUV, there’s a simple solution: the entry-level Cooper version has BMW’S excellent 1.5-litre threecylinder turbo-petrol powerplant, as previously seen in everything from the 2-series Active Tourer to the i8 plug-in sports car to... other Minis.

So while you can still have a Countryman Cooper S with a punchy, high(ish)-performance 2.0-litre turbo, the sweet and earnest machinations of the threepot engine actually inject an endearing quality back into Mini’s SUV.

With 100kw/220nm the triplepot engine is modest but certainly not slow, getting the Countryman to 100kmh in just under the benchmark 10 seconds.

More importantly, it’s a hoot. Three-cylinder engines have a distinctively thrummy sound and this one spins smoothly right up to the redline. You’ll want to take it there quite a lot.

The small engine only gets a

New Mini Countryman is a big deal: strong seller for the brand and its largest-ever model.