Mini Clubman
Owner of a Mk3 three-door Mini tries our bigger one for size
How it measures up against a Mk3
Regular readers might remember the last Mini long-term test car we had before our current Clubman. It was a 2014 Cooper three-door hatch, one of the first third-generation BMW Minis off the line, and I ended up buying the thing because I liked it so much.
The purchase was a U-turn that Theresa May would have been proud of. Previously, I wasn’t a fan of what BMW had done to the Mini brand, making it a rather cartoonish and gimmicky parody of what it used to be. I thought it had become distinctly uncool in the process. However, I loved the new-found maturity in the new three-door hatch. It was still great fun to drive when you wanted it to be, but not so draining or intense as previous generations of Mini when you just wanted a relaxing cruise.
I still own the three-door Cooper, so I was intrigued to find out how the Mini brand had further evolved with the Clubman when Stan Papior leant me the keys to his for three weeks.
What’s quite hard to get your head around is just how similar the two cars are to drive. Mini has given the Clubman the same pointy front end and quick steering and responses as the smaller hatch, rather than the more mature dynamics you might expect from a much plusher and bigger car. When driving the Clubman, I found myself frequently doing a double-take in the rear-view mirror to see just how far away the rear windscreen was and to confirm that I wasn’t in my smaller car.
But I can’t say I’m sold on the fact that it drives that way. It just feels a bit weird and lacking in subtlety. On the one hand, the Mini’s interiors have been made ever more mature and more premium. Even the Mini badge and company logo have been redesigned to show that Mini has become all grown-up. Yet on the other hand, it seems Mini can’t quite shake this need to make its cars drive in an intense way, something I’d thought it had solved.
It’s a shame, because it got the blend of fun and maturity absolutely bang-on with the first model in this third-generation range. However successful the company’s growth has been in boosting sales and allowing more people to stay with the brand in bigger models, Mini’s smallest car remains its best in my opinion.