Road Test Review: Mini Cooper S Countryman

Friday, 26 March 2021

MINI COOPER S COUNTRYMAN
Base price: $58,990
Powertrain and economy: 2.0-litre turbo-petrol four-cylinder, 141kW/280Nm, 7-speed dual clutch transmission, FWD, combined economy 6.7L/100km, CO2 154g/km (source: RightCar).

The Mini Countryman is a proper SUV: see, it’s parked on grass!

Vital statistics: 4297mm long, 1822mm wide, 1557mm high, 2670mm wheelbase, luggage capacity 450 litres, 18-inch alloy wheels.
We like: Almost as agile and fun as the hatch, impressive ride despite ‘go-kart’ handling, surprisingly roomy.

The S isn’t quite so special any more, but it is still on a very good little car.

We don't like: Retro interior done to death now, gets very pricey when you start adding options.

Mini has given its biggest car a facelift for 2021 – we check out the Cooper S version of the refreshed Countryman crossover SUV and come away even more impressed by it than we were before.

A Mini SUV?! Doesn’t that go against everything Mini stands for?

The Countryman is around the same size as a VW Golf and almost as much fun on a winding road.

Oh, are some people still banging on about that? Actually, don’t answer – I know they are.

**READ MORE:

BMW’s 2.0-litre turbo engine is an absolute gem in the Countryman.

* Long-term road test review: Mini Cooper S E All4 Countryman

* The best Mini JCW model is the one starting with 'C'

The Union Jack taillights are just to remind you Mini used to be owned by the British back when they weren’t made as well.

* The biggest-ever Mini is better with a really small engine

* New Mini Countryman is a big deal in all kinds of ways

The Countryman’s interior is high quality, but a bit overly familiar these days.

The fact is that Mini stands for whatever BMW wants it to stand for, regardless of a single tiny car it made decades ago (which, full disclosure, is still one of the best cars I have personally ever owned – a 1974 Mark III with its 998cc engine bored out to 1100cc – as well as the most potentially life-threatening, admittedly) and for the last 20 years BMW has wanted Mini to stand for “fun” rather than “the smallest”.

Yes, the off-road “Country Timer” is spectacularly pointless in a FWD car, but the monster truck Mini is cute...

But they have also wanted it to stand for “profit”, so had to make things like a crossover SUV, much in the way Porsche had to in order to survive, and even the hardcore Porsche fans have to admit that one actually turned out quite good for everyone.

And, for what it matters, the Cooper S Countryman is one of the most fun things in its price range within the small SUV segment, with only really one exception. But more on that later…

Yes, the Cooper S Countryman is actually a barrel of laughs to throw down a winding road – not as immediate and agile as a Mini hatch, to be sure, but certainly not as far from it as you might expect a raised up, heftier SUV version of a hatch to be.

The Cooper S Countryman is a solid small SUV choice, but a more enticing option looms if you start adding up the options.

Cooper S? That’s the fast one, right?

Sorry, that hasn’t been the case for, well, 20 years really.

While I will whole-heartedly defend BMW’s decision to make Minis bigger (and therefore significantly less likely to crumple into a ball of tinfoil under a truck) as long as they remained fun, the use of the hallowed Cooper name on bog-standard versions of them does still rub me the wrong way a bit. I know, get over it.

Cooper is now the standard car (in New Zealand, at least), while the Cooper S is the slightly powered up, higher spec version. The JCW or John Cooper Works cars are the properly hot ones these days.

So that means this Countryman is the mid-spec model that sits between the Cooper and JCW versions (there’s also a PHEV version tucked in there) that packs BMW’s 141kW/280Nm 2.0-litre turbo engine driving the front wheels through a seven-speed dual clutch transmission.

And while it doesn’t pack the full-blown lunacy of the JCW’s 225kW/450Nm smashing through all four wheels, I would argue that the weight it avoids by not having the AWD system actually makes it more enjoyable. It’s certainly more precise and eager to change direction.

But isn't a big, bulky SUV a pain around town?

Now you’re just being silly, because while the Countryman may well be a bigger crossover version of a Mini, it’s still far from actually being big. In fact, the Countryman is shorter than the latest Volkswagen Golf and only 66mm taller.

It does, however, have a longer wheelbase and 70 litres more boot space (450 compared to the Golf’s 380) and the model I drove was optioned up the “Signature” pack that jacks the Cooper S’s $58,990 base price up to a hefty $64,590, so while it might be Golf-sized, but it sure ain’t Golf-priced…

But around town it was just as easy and pleasurable to thrash around as it was out on the open road.

The immediacy and eagerness that BMW has imbued modern Minis with is present and correct in the Countryman, while the 2.0-litre turbo engine is wonderfully flexible in an urban environment and the dual clutch transmission is one of the best out there.

And while it is big for a Mini, its small size in generally makes it a thoroughly liveable little thing in an urban environment, with more than enough space for a small family.

So is there anything you don’t actually like about it, you Mini fanboy?

Yeah, I’ll wear that. I am a bit of a fanboy when it comes to Minis both new and old, but I will say that the retro interior design has been stretched way too far now – we get it, Mini’s had a big round centre speedo, but that doesn't mean that you need to keep referencing it to the point of parody in the new ones…

The interior is still of a massively higher quality than the previous Countryman (and arguably the best in the Mini range), but it hardly moves the goalposts when it comes to keeping Mini relevant and modern, not because of its retro design, but because it is the same old retro design the brand has been hammering away at for years.

The seating position is too high for my tastes and can’t be lowered far enough for me to get entirely comfortable (I get it is an SUV, so punters expect a higher seat position, but it is only a pretend one, so at least let us drop the seats down further…).

And while I think the idea of the “Country Timer” that gradually turns the Mini on the display into a monster truck the longer you drive it “off-road” is adorably naff, the fact that the Cooper S is FWD makes that spectacularly pointless. Or a very clever and meta dig at the whole spectacular pointlessness of the entire FWD crossover/pretend SUV segment. Is BMW that self-aware?

Any other cars I should consider?

The most obvious Countryman alternative comes in-house by way of the BMW X1 and X2 that shares the Mini’s underpinnings and engines, but of course they are carefully priced around each other, meaning that you can get the entry-level BMW badged versions with the smaller three-cylinder engine for around the same price ($62,900 fort the X1, $64,990 for the X2) as the optioned-up 2.0-litre Cooper S we drive here. The same goes for a Mercedes-Benz GLA 180 at $62,700.

Other small high-end SUVs include the entry Volvo XC40 ($61,990) and the Lexus UX200 ($59,900) and, based on its massively high-quality interior and driver engagement, you could easily say the top-spec AWD Mazda CX-30 Limited ($50,990) deserves a look too.

But the biggest fly in the Cooper S Countryman's ointment is that one exception I hinted at right at the start – the Cupra Ateca. At $66,900 the Cupra packs the Volkswagen Golf R’s 221kW/400Nm AWD driveline into a small SUV that is effectively so low that it really isn’t even a “tall hatch” and is an absolute blast to drive.

The standard Cooper S Countryman is a fantastic package, but it gets harder to justify as you option it up, particularly with that Cupra lurking well within range…