2016 Mini S Clubman

The 2016 Mini S Clubman is one of GAYOT's Top 10 Dog-Friendly Cars and GAYOT's Top 10 Fun-to-Drive Cars

For 2016 the Mini Cooper S Clubman returns and is now built on the same BMW global platform that underpins the Mini Cooper Hardtop and the new BMW X1. Compared to the Mini Hardtop 2-door, the Clubman is a foot longer, with a longer wheelbase and more room in the backseat. It also has a truly usable cargo area, with up to 47 cubic feet of space, rather than the tiny cubbies behind the seats of the Mini Hardtop 2-door. Otherwise, from the driver’s seat forward the Mini Cooper S Clubman is pretty similar to its smaller cousins. The 2016 Mini Cooper S Clubman we tested has the same 2.0-liter turbocharged inline-4 found in the Mini Hardtop S. In this case it drives the front wheels through a transverse application of BMW’s 8-speed sport automatic transmission. Some may think it borders on sacrilege to order a Mini- famed for their “go-kart handling” and driver involvement– with an automatic transmission, but at least this unit shifts rapidly and smoothly and, with 8 gears to choose from, is almost always at the right engine speed.

The 2.0-liter turbo is smooth and strong, with plenty of torque available even at very low revs. It makes pulling into traffic relatively stress-free, since unlike the older 1.6-liter Mini engines, it doesn’t have to rev to high RPMs to make most of its power. Flat-out acceleration in the 2016 Mini Clubman is a little down from the lighter Hardtop, but not by much. With 189 horsepower and 207 lb-ft of torque, it gets to sixty mph in around 6.7 seconds. Not bad when you consider its fuel-efficiency as well. Our test car averaged 21.7 mpg overall.

The Clubman retains much of the handling and roadholding character of a Mini. The steering is quick and you can vary steering effort and throttle response with a driving mode switch. If you switch to “sport” a cartoon on the center screen cherfully says “let’s motor… hard.”

The interior now has higher-quality materials, and an easy-to-see center screen in place of the old Mini’s pie plate speedometer. It now feels a little less toy-like and a little more, well, car-like. It is a BMW product, after all, and prices for the 2016 Cooper S Clubman can easily get into the low 30s with options.