No Countryman for old men

NEW-STYLE: LUXURIOUS AND FUN TO DRIVE BUT MINI IS A WHISPER NOT A BLAST FROM THE PAST

- Jim Freeman

I’m not the first person to write this and I won’t be the last: the modern-day MINI is anything but…

While I understand the purists’ mourning at the transformation of a motoring legend into a fad brand (hey, was Mini ever anything but a "toy" car?), I don’t feel their pain.

I’m a big feller, built more like a rugby player (albeit gone to seed) than a Mr Bean or Michael Caine in his Italian Job days and can see no point in forking out three-quarters of a million rand on a vehicle that is excruciatingly cramped.

The last time I felt comfortable in an old-style Mini was when my Uncle Jim owned one in Hillbrow at the time when they were still made by Leyland South Africa. I was 13 years old and hadn’t yet experienced my teenage growth spurt.

To put things in perspective; the 2024 MINI Countryman C in which I drove around the Cederberg a fortnight ago was 4.444m long, just 30cm (the length of a school ruler) shorter than a BMW X3. By comparison, Uncle Jim’s two-door run-around was a mere 3.054m in length… a difference of nearly 1.4m.

In this case, bigger is definitely better.