Mini Me

I got a book about Minis for Christmas - I found it very interesting - there were even a few mentions of the Metro. I used to drive a Mini back in my student days at the end of the Eighties. It was a 1-litre Mayfair and it was an automatic so you could beat anything away from the lights.

In those days, a Mini Clubman looked like this...

It was basically a standard Mini with a square front and a better dash.

So when MINI (note the capital letters - it's how you're supposed to distinguish the new BMW-Owned version) announced their Clubman you could be forgiven for thinking there would be a similar revision but no - this was to be an estate variant. Now Mini-traditionalists would expect this to be called a Traveller or Countryman like this example here...

Doesn't that look good? Any road up, the MINI Clubman (capital letters!) was a pretty good car except for the doors. They went with the split side-opening rear doors which irritated some drivers due to rear view issues. But I quite like the retro look so that's not my beef. My beef is the suicide-side door behind the driver's door - BMW refused to put this on the left-hand side for right-hand-drive cars so anyone getting out of the back using this door has to do so into the road rather than onto the pavement. This was well-documented when this car was launched in 2008 but I do think that the design of a British-built car based on a British icon should cater for British roads.

The latest incarnation of MINI, due to go on sale in the Autumn, does now use the Countryman name. I spotted this short film on the Fifth Gear site a couple of weeks back and Top Gear Magazine have done a brief review of it. It seems to be bigger than most MINIs - in fact it is Golf-sized (don't you just hate those "it's like a Golf but not a Golf" ads? - maybe I'll do a post about car ads - after all I did do car insurance ads) It has two separate fully-adjustable rear seats (with the option of a bench instead but how often do Mini (or MINI) drivers have three people in the back of their cars?) It also has the option of four-wheel drive which makes you feel a bit safer in the current weather but stuffs your fuel economy. Most importantly, it has conventional, non-controversial rear doors. It does seem, though, to be getting even further away from the true Mini ethos but why not?

For the Mini-traditionalist who likes the MINI, there is the entry-level MINI First and for the Mini-traditionalist who doesn't like the MINI, there are plenty of good, nippy, reliable and cheap small (even Mini-sized) cars from Japan, Korea and Malaysia. And for the real Mini-traditionalist, there are still plenty of real Minis built in the '80s and '90s on the market - I regularly see one on a 51-plate as well.