2008 Mini Cooper S Clubman Video

2008 Mini Cooper S Clubman Video Transcript

>> Brian Cooley: Now this is a proper station wagon. Lot's of room in the back, jump seats: but if that's a wagon, what's this? It's the Mini Clubman in S-trim. Quite a bit bigger, but still really, really small. Let's take this little oxymoron for a ride. ^M00:00:18 [ Music ] ^M00:00:26

>> Brian Cooley: Now a Clubman is 6 inches longer overall than a standard mini, 3 inches more in the wheel base. And then like someone who can't stop remodeling their house, Mini just added doors everywhere. First of all, there's one here behind the passenger's seat. They call this the Club Door: to give you vague access to the back seat, but you're still going to rip your pant's seams getting in there. By the way, the door is on this side, because putting it on the other side would have required reengineering the fuel filler pipe, and that would have meant new crash certification. Then around the back, they have what's called the Barn Doors. This is a whole different approach to opening up the back of a wagon. You've got one on the left, one on the right. By the way, notice this little trick here: the tail lights stay on the car, the door closes around them. Also, when these are closed, you get a rather thick pillar down the middle that you will notice in your rear view mirror. ^M00:01:21 [ Music ] ^M00:01:24

>> Brian Cooley: Neat thing about Minis, they're great cars for picnics because they come standard with a built in dinner plate. Look at that speedometer: it's gotten bigger. It's 20 percent larger than when they first brought this car back to market. But part of the reason it's so large is because when you option this car with GPS nav, it goes in that space. So there's a lot more room now for the 4 by 6 LCD screen, that goes into the nav unit which also have real time traffic - provided for free - and voice activated control. I've got to be honest: I'm kind of over the Pixar inspired interior on Minis. It was cute and definitely audacious when they first came out, but now all this round, bulbous stuff just feels dated to me and kind of goofy. It really risks putting this car in the same club with the new Beetle, except Minis have a lot more street cred and don't normally get sneered at by car folks: especially in Cooper S-trim. Audio options exist a-plenty. You can add in HD radio. There's also an iPod USB adapter. Sirius Satellite Radio is a thousand dollars but that's because they include a lifetime subscription. Bluetooth is an option: not standard. Now the heart of our Cooper S is a happy little thing with a song in it: a 1.6 liter Turbo Inline 4. It gives us a 172 horsepower, 177 foot pounds with nary a trace of lag. That's a nice trick. Zero to 60 happens in 6.7 seconds and the EPA rating is a rather nice 26/34. But in reality, I see we're doing about 24 because we're a tad more spirited than the average driver I would say. By the way, the motor is made by PSA: that's Peugeot Citroen in France. Before you sneer, realize that parent company BMW also has a lot of the motors for the 3-Series, also being made by PSA. And some of the credit for our lagless performance in this car has to go to this Getrag 6-speed manual, which is the base gearbox in a Cooper S. You can get a 6-speed automatic with paddle shifters. I'd say no to that. This is a sweet shifting little transmission and a pretty good clutch as well. Now again, in Cooper S trim we're talking 25 thousand almost, base: 2 thousand dollars for the nav rig, 5 hundred for HD radio, a thousand dollars for Sirius but then you're done paying fees after that. And if you have to, the automatic is 13 hundred: paddle shifters included. ^M00:03:44 [ Music ]