When you've been test-driving nearly every new vehicle on the market for as long as I have, you get to the point where you mostly know what to expect. Not that I or most other veteran car reviewers make up our minds about new products before we drive them, but certainly we formulate theories to go about testing once a new car lands in our driveway. More often than not, our experiments confirm our hypotheses. This can be a great triumph or a crushing let-down, but rarely does a vehicle manage to be both so completely as the Mini Countryman.

In advance of my stint with our long-termer, I fully expected to be disappointed by its size. I am one of those people who can go on the road for a week with a small duffel bag, and as such, have never found the limitations of the tiny Mini hardtop particularly challenging. The Mini Clubman solved my only problem with the hardtop by affording me a bit more room for my daughter. Thus, I expected the jumbo, four-door Countryman to be overkill.

But if I had a reasonable expectation that the larger size and heavier curb weight would render the Countryman considerably less fun to drive, I also figured that I'd love it anyway. After all, it's a Mini, and I have yet to meet one that didn't charm me with its aesthetics and minimalist focus on driving.

Quite surprisingly, neither of these assumptions proved correct.

Photo gallery and more of the original article at Autoblog...

 

So basically he wants it to look and drive like a BMW.

 

Yeah, what I gather from his writeup is he loved the first impressions but just couldn't live with it.

 

I do agree that the CM's micky mouse center cluster is a bit off in design, as are a few other elements. The hand brake could be easily better designes as a side pull, thus allowing better rail access. New model production would also expected to be abit higher coming from MINI/BMW. I'm just reading way too many issues that are not yet addressed 2 yrs later. A $30K car should not be plauged w/ reliability issues that leave the owner heading to the dealership all the time.

personal gripes aside like ride harshness, etc. the 'look' is MINI, buy it if you like it. Its far from perfect, but fills a nice market niche.

 

"While the too-stiff suspension issue is likely an easy enough remedy (order the standard suspension and replace those run-flats), other issues began to pile up pretty quickly. Like the clutch. Perhaps the expected take rate on a manual Countryman was so low that Mini didn't feel the need to do a better job here, but I have never stalled a vehicle so often as I did the Countryman during my first week in it. Between the power-robbing all-wheel-drive system, the lag of the turbocharger and a friction point that's both vague and brief, our Countryman can make even experienced drivers look like 15-year-olds."

 

I was given a CM loaner for a couple of days while my MCS is in the shop for some major work, and do not find the suspension to be "too stiff" by any means (though that could be partly because my loaner does not have the sport suspension while it does have 17" runflats).

Also, I find the BMW 3 Series interior design the author lauds to be excessively Teutonic and rectangular, much like a '90's vintage VW. I love the distinctive MINI dash and the CM center rail.

 

ugly color option too and wheels

 

18s are always less comfortable than 17s. It's the law of rubber quantity.

 

I was advised to take the 17" and sport suspension or 18" and no sport suspension. I did the latter and after 3300 miles could not be happier.

 

I kinda like that blue & white combo....it's that washed out brown color that looks funky to me....

 

I have the former and

could not be happier!

 

So here's what I don't get. The author says he tried this out for several weeks, and never seemed to adjust to the ergonomics.

How exactly is that a 1 year long term update?

 

The way these long term updates work is that the site has the car for a year at a time, but various writers have the car over that time-frame. Typically it will get moved about the country or will be treated as a fleet car for the main office and we get opinions from different people as they get time in the car.

 

I understand that. And normally, you'll see this type of an article for a short term update. One writer's perspective.

Normally for a long term update, you'll see stuff about reliability. How it sat around because no one wanted it, or how it was hard to come by because everyone wanted their hands on it.

There was another long term update from another magazine a month ago, which really gave a great detailed full year long wrap up. Just hearing about 1 writer's 2-3 weeks with a car that he didn't want to get used to, to me, is not a long term update.

Sorry. I realize now this was just that. Just a month to month update by one person. I was under the impression this was the final update for the year. My bad!