Mini Clubman a cracking car and practical to boot

Among all the models in the increasingly diversified Mini range, the original Clubman was perhaps the weirdest of the lot. With its idiosyncratic door layout — two front, one rear, and two back — the Clubman was not your normal run-of-the-mill family car choice.

Sat, 20 Feb, 2016 - 00:00

Declan Colley

The single, rear-hinged, rear door was a mad design and particularly so for anyone who bought a right-hand drive version because that door only opened on the driver’s side and therefore if you were disgorging kids outside school, for example, you were letting them out into the ‘traffic’ side of the road and not the pavement side.

It was a controversial design touch and while wacky in its own right, it was also pretty dangerous.

Now, while Mini probably sells many more cars in left and drive than they do RHD, the controversy surrounding the door probably meant nothing to great swathes of their customers, but it certainly blunted sales in RHD markets, such as ours, the Brits, Aussies, South Africans, and Japanese.

Understandably, therefore, the new Clubman has eschewed this element of the car’s character and it now comes with six doors — two front, two rear and two barn door-type things at the back which open outwards rather than the more conventional upwards hatch.

It is still a bit wacky, but a lot better — and safer — than previously. The look of the car has thus changed somewhat and it now fits into the Mini line-up as something of a Mini estate, with all the added interior space and practicality that usually goes with that territory.

So, if you can’t cope with a regular two or four-door Mini — even in bulked-up Countryman form — and need more room for all that gear that families generate, then this is a potential answer.

Not only is the Clubman visually bigger than before, once aboard you immediately sense the extra head and shoulder room in the front and the more generous head and leg room in the rear.

Larger door openings also help when getting in and out of the thing. The boot too is a beneficiary of the larger dimensions and with 60:40 split rear seats which are standard, the potential capacity is an impressive 1,250 litres of luggage space.

Another difference with the Clubman is the bespoke dash which, while keeping many of the traditional Mini elements, differs quite a lot from other models and is of a higher quality too.

And then you come to the powerplant, which is now a turbocharged two litre petrol unit instead of the 1.6 petrol turbo utilised before. As you might expect in these circumstances there is considerably more zing on offer now, with some 141kW (192bhp) available at 5,000rpm and bags of torque — 280Nm — from just 1,250rpm. Those figures translate into a startling 7.1 second 0-100kph time and a top speed in excess of 230kph.

The optional eight speed automatic gearbox is, I can report, a delight to live with and makes extracting the available power all the more pleasurable.

The worry here for any driver worth their salt is that this could turn into a wheel-spinning, torque steering monster, but rest easy because it isn’t. We all know the Mini range long enough to accept that handling deficiencies are largely unacceptable to the makers and the utilisation of MacPherson struts at the front and a multilink arrangement at the back produces the go-karty feel which has stood the marque out from the crowd. If you cannot enjoy the driving experience here then you may need the assistance of an undertaker.

Those damnable run-flat tyres aside, the ride and handling are spot-on and when you throw in the caterwauling exhaust note from about 4,000rpm up, the whole experience is just what it should be.

Although the 50k+ price tag on the tester might not make the car appeal to a very broad audience, the fact of the matter is that this is a truly cracking car and one which will actually give you massive driving pleasure and no little element of practicality as well.