THERE'S a little-known tale from the creation of the new MINI I suddenly remembered while roadtesting the Countryman.The story goes that just after BMW signed off the reinvention of the British small car classic, they figured that if their smallest car is called a MINI, then logically its eventual bigger brother should be christened the MAXI. Only when they realised British Leyland had already tried - and not entirely successfully - did the idea get quietly dropped.
This, to all extents and purposes, is that car; a MINI that stretches the idea of being minature to its vaguest, fuzziest realms yet. It is MINI made massive, a car that's trying to grow faster than the families spawned by the company's original customers. Don't move out of your MINI and into an MPV just yet, not when you can have the same retro style in a slightly bigger package. That's the idea, anyway.
But the Countryman - cutely named in homage of the Sixties Mini estates - comes across as a turgid take on its smaller and sportier sisters, boasting all the familiar MINI styling cues but in a slightly bloated way. It's the same story on the inside too, with an interior that blends its use of colours and materials well but comes across as chintzy in some of the fussier details, particularly the pizza-sized speedometer surrouding the stereo.
Out on the road it handles impressively for something its size, with a smooth feel through the brakes and suspension, but it feels almost unrelated to the sprightly MINI hatchbacks, with the fun factor strangely absent.
Where it does impress is not the packaging but the dressing, with the retro touches like the cool rocker switches on the dashboard being familiar to MINI moguls, but almost unheard of among rivals like Ford's Kuga and Nissan's Quashqai, which focus more on practicality than pose value.
But in the end there's one big problem that'd stop me buying one: Skoda's Yeti, which can't match the MINI brand's catchet but makes up for it by being better almost everywhere else, particularly where driving, practicality and value for money are concerned. If you really want driving fun for all the family, buy one of those.
Weirdly, if you want the most MINI for your money, you're better off sticking with the smaller ones.
As published in The Champion on November 17, 2010
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