Motoring in Spain - Mini Clubman
THE FIRST MINI TO BE CLASSIFIED AS A FIVE-SEATER
Mini Clubman THE FIRST MINI TO BE CLASSIFIED AS A FIVE-SEATER
Fun… and practical
THE FIRST MINI TO BE CLASSIFIED AS A FIVE-SEATER FIRST THERE WAS THE RETURN OF THE "STANDARD" MINI (ALBEIT A DECIDEDLY MODERN VERSION)… NOW, AS CHARLIE FLINDT REPORTS, BMW HAVE ADDED A COUPLE OF DOORS AND RELEASED A CONTEMPORARY CLUBMAN. Nostalgia is a funny thing. (Lose ten points if you’ve just said, "It certainly isn’t what it used to be.") I’m amazed how often people go on about the demise of the British car industry. "Of course," they say, "we hardly build any cars in Britain now. In the good old day, hundreds of thousands were employed in the car trade."
There are two major faults in this argument. The first is that back in "the good old days" cars weren’t so much "built" as flung together nonchalantly in the brief assembly periods between strikes. And the simplest way to spot the second flaw is to take a drive up to the Midlands from any major port. My favourite is the A34, which leads north from Southampton. Coming the other way is an almost constant stream of car transporters loaded up to bursting with shiny new cars – all built in Britain. I grant you that the badges on the bonnet may not be very British, but never let it be said that we don’t build cars any more.
One of the mast frequent cars to be seen hurtling south by the lorry-load is the Mini. And, if there were ever a fiendishly clever piece of nostalgia-based marketing, it’s this car. When BMW picked up the wreckage of Rover, inspected the bits, and discarded most of it, they kept hold of the Mini concept.
What they launched in July 2001 was a "Mini" in name and visual similarity only. Gone were all the terrifying aspects of Mini ownership in the past: rust, unreliability and wheezy performance. The new Mini became an instant classic, notching up sales record after sales record. New engines and different variants seem to be introduced almost monthly, to keep the range fresh and in the headlines.
The latest version of the Mini to emerge from Oxford is the Clubman. Once again, it trades shamelessly on nostalgic yearnings for the small British estate cars of the sixties and seventies, with the publicity material citing as inspiration such "classics" (and I use the term loosely) as the Morris Mini Traveller, Austin Mini Countryman and Mini Clubman Estate.
The most obvious thing about the Clubman is the extra length. It is 24 centimetres longer than the hatchback Mini, giving another well-needed eight centimetres to rear seat passengers and the rest to the boot space. This makes it the first Mini to be classified as a five-seater, as well as the first that might be able to take their luggage too.
The second feature that jumps out at you is the door for the rear passengers. Getting people in and out of the back of a small two-door car is never easy; they have to clamber past folding seats, awkward slides and rails, and bits of seatbelt. In the Clubman, a sort of half-door has been added on the right hand side to make the whole process much simpler.
Over in the UK, there has been a certain amount of grumping about this door, for two reasons. First, it’s on the right hand side, which means the passengers have to get out on the "oncoming traffic" side of the vehicle; and second, because it’s a "suicide" door – rear-hinged. I can’t see what the fuss is all about. After all, the driver has to get out on the "traffic" side, no matter what country he or she is driving in, and if "suicide" doors are good enough for Rolls Royce, they’re good enough for a Mini.
When Mini was first launched, the interior was a great success, and very little has changed. You still get a range of "funky" (and I use the word carefully) dials in unorthodox places (in the centre of the dash for old time’s sake), lots of swoops and curves in the dashboard, and what looks like scaffolding in the doors. It still looks fresh and original, and brings a smile to the face.
What has changed from the 2001 Mini is the range of engines. From launch, the Clubman is available in Cooper (fast), Cooper S (very fast) and Cooper D (moderately fast but very frugal diesel) formats. If you add all the fuel saving trickery − like Auto Start-Stop, Brake Energy Regeneration and Gearshift Point Indicator – you get some very respectable economies. The Cooper D has a CO2 emission figure of only 109 g/km – a figure that matches some of the hybrid vehicles sanctimoniously coming onto the market.
BMW’s genius with the new Mini was always the sense of fun that came with it. It appealed to people who wanted to enjoy small car motoring. The hatchback version, though, tended to limit the fun factor for those in the back, and had a fairly limited luggage space. The new Clubman sorts these problems out at a stroke. I can confidently predict that, within only a few months, it will outnumber the "standard" Minis loaded up on the juggernauts trundling down the A34 to Southampton docks; proving, once again, that British car manufacturing is actually in remarkably good shape.
MINI CLUBMAN
Cooper / Cooper D / Cooper S Engine: 1.6 litre 4-cylinder
Power: 121 / 110 / 175 hp
Max speed: 200 / 193 / 224
Performance, 0-100 kph: 9.8 / 10.4 / 7.6 seg.
