MINI NO MORE
Although the new Clubman is technically still a Mini, it is much larger than its siblings,
MIDWAY, GA.— I’d almost finished taking pictures under photogenic Spanish moss when a BMW M4 pulled up beside my parked Mini.
“What is that?” said the woman behind the wheel. “It’s big. That’s a Mini?”
The new Clubman is clearly a Mini, with its hood logo front and centre, its low roof and rounded front. But it’s also clearly quite big. In fact, it’s the largest Mini now made and it’s classified as a compact premium car.
“Compact,” as in bigger than a subcompact, which is every other Mini on the road.
“I used to own a 2005 Mini convertible,” said Diane Kroell, as she stepped out of the M4 and took a walk around the Clubman.
“I loved that car, but my husband couldn’t drive it. He’s six-foot-two and was just too cramped. It was too bad.”
My co-driver on this test event was also six-foot-two. Kroell sat in the driver’s seat next to him and saw there was room for her to pat him on the head if she’d wanted to, though she restrained herself. She looked impressed and he looked disappointed.
“We need cargo space for carrying stuff up to Savannah,” she said before hopping out to take a look in the trunk. Sure enough, there’s 360 litres of room back there and, if the rear seats are folded flat, that bumps up to 1,250 litres.
It’s not a normal trunk, though. There’s no hatch, like a Countryman or the 5 Door, but instead there is a pair of side-swinging doors that Mini calls “wings.” They open automatically one at a time with the press of a button on the key fob.
The clever marketers at Mini call the Clubman a six-door estate car. It’s supposed to be reminiscent of the old European station wagons that had a pair of wide-swinging doors on the back like a van.
It’s a fair bit larger than the previous-generation Clubman, which had 930 litres of total cargo space and seats for only four people, though a fifth person in the back will still be a squeeze. The roof height is unchanged, but the seats are better positioned.
This time around, the rear seats are both comfortable and accessible. In the last Clubman, which has been out of production for more than a year, there was only one half-door on the right for getting in and out of the car. Now the Clubman is 30 centimetres longer, which adds legroom and creates enough space for a pair of proper doors.
But this is still supposed to be a Mini. Where does it all end?
Its designer says the target was to be shorter than the Volkswagen Golf, which it is, sort of. In North America, a car’s official length includes its front licence plate bracket and apparently that tips the Clubman two millimetres over the Golf. Since even the word “Golf” is much longer than two millimetres, I don’t think many owners will lose sleep over it.
For all its extra size, the new Clubman does still drive like a Mini. All models come as standard with a drive mode selector that chooses between Sport, Mid and Green. Throttle and steering response is tightened in Sport, as is the shift pattern for automatics, while Green relaxes everything and is more judicious with the air conditioning and heat.
All variations — in fact, all Minis — come with a choice of six-speed manual or automatic, but the new Cooper S Clubman includes an all-new eight-speed Steptronic transmission. This is also available as a Sport transmission, which means paddle shifters, which work well to make the drive feel more like a video game.
The Cooper Clubman lists for $24,990, while the Cooper S Clubman starts at $28,990. Kroell got back in her M4, saying she was keen to tell her husband about the Clubman. “We don’t need it to be big,” she said — “just big enough. This seems big enough to me.”
But is it too big now? Not yet. It’s large enough to be practical, but small enough — just — to still feel like a Mini should. Here’s hoping the Clubman stays as the largest model for a long time to come. What options are available for the Mini Clubman? The company takes pride in offering an enormous choice of options for its cars and the new Clubman is no exception.
There are 10 different exterior col- ours, eight different leather and leatherette options for the seats, three different wheels sized from 16 to 19 inches, a plethora of Union Jack flags for the roof and mirrors — and that’s just the beginning.
Most options come at an additional cost. This is Mini’s way of offering a low price to attract buyers, then bumping up the price to something more typical for a premium vehicle.
It’s possible to almost double the cost of the most basic Cooper Clubman by requesting such options as $590 metallic paint or $1,000 “lapis-luxury” blue paint.
Navigation is a $1,000 option and a head-up display that comes with a rearview camera is an extra $1,300. But whatever you do, don’t forget the Union Jack mirrors ($198) and the Union Jack roof decal ($180).