The College Driver » 2010 MINI Cooper Clubman

Introduction
Performance
Design
Interior
Tech
Safety
Conclusion

Split rear barn doors, a club door, extra cargo and passenger space, a longer wheelbase, and more masculine appeal are what separate the MINI Cooper Clubman from the regular Cooper. We were bit anxious to see how a go-kart-like car would be worth $21k and how much attention we could get driving it.

MINI USA gave us a barebones Clubman and we really couldn't ask for more. This is the first car we've truly come to like for its personality, driving characteristics, efficiency, safety, customization, and price. So many exterior and interior appearance options are offered on the MINI Cooper Clubman that each driver will probably never see another one just like theirs.

Let's take a look at how it did in daily traffic, highway cruising, a night with friends, and life in general.

The MINI Cooper Clubman couldn't perform any better than this. It handled like the tires were glued to the road, with tight, linear steering feel and the perfect amount of weighting. It felt like a much heavier and expensive car than it really is, and the longer wheelbase over the regular Cooper helped keep it stable when carving through road curves too.

Power for the Clubman came through the front wheels from an efficient 1.6-liter, 118 horsepower four-cylinder engine that really liked to rev. All 114 lb-ft of the engines torque is available at 4,250 rpm, which helped the MINI feel a lot faster than what the specs said.

Our Clubman tester came with a Getrag G255 six-speed manual transmission that glided through the shift gate. Clutch pedal feel was smooth, consistent, and allowed us to powershift through the gears and get to highway speeds worry-free.

The clutch disengages and engages about half-way, which was nice in morning traffic when we didn't have the energy yet to constantly push it all the way in every five seconds. On the highway, our only gripe was that the engine got a little buzzy. Even in sixth gear, the engine hovered around 2,800 RPM as it kept the MINI up to speed. Passing power was fantastic in either setting though, with more than enough push to get beyond the tractor trailers and Escalades.

One part of the MINI Cooper Clubman that's really understated is the Sport button in front of the shifter. Tap that little sucker and suddenly the steering gets so firm that it can be mistaken for a Porsche. We then hit the gas and thought someone just poured 100 octane fuel in the tank, with the engine waking up and throttle response feeling instant.

The braking system on the MINI Clubman worked phenomenally. We swear that it was pulled out of the BMW 740i because of how strong, reassuring, and firm the pedal and overall system felt. Working with the four-wheel disc brakes is a whole alphabet of systems that ensure the fun could stop when ever we want it to. On the roster of standard equipment are anti-lock, electronic brakeforce distribution, cornering brake control, and dynamic stability control.

Optional, and not on our tester, are dynamic traction control and electronic differential lock control. Both are designed to help the driver maintain control when they tell dynamic stability control to put a sock in it.

MINI describes their vehicles as having a "wide bulldog stance" because they're short and wide. The Clubman is low to the ground, the wheels are pushed out to the ends of the car, and its center of gravity is quite low. It kind of reminds us of Pontiac's "wide-track handling" concept that was a joke, but we can really see it working here.

We're not really sure what to make of the MINI Cooper Clubman. Our friends either hated it or loved it. Some say it's for the guy in a band that needs the extra cargo room, others feel like the Clubman is the car for a trendy, single woman with a small business. One thing is true though, this car is unique, customizable in so many ways, and exciting to look at. It easily wins the award for most character in the sub-compact class.

Up front are auto-off projector headlights that throw an intense, far-reaching amount of bright light at night. Beneath them in the lower half of the front end are two style lights that work as good daytime lights if the "parking lights" setting is left on, and slotted below them are the optional front fog lights.

What separates the Clubman from the rest of the MINI line is the "club door." It's an extra door on the passenger side that opens outwards opposite of the front door. We found it helpful when friends wanted to get in the back, but a bit cumbersome to open from the outside given that there's no handle other than the one inside. The front-passenger seat has a lever on the upper-back to slide forward quickly, but the passenger had to readjust the seat each time. The front-passenger seatbelt also affects ingress and egress to the back seat since it's directly in the way.

Out back are "split rear barn doors" that have a power mechanism to pop them open, and then pneumatic struts to push them out. We noticed that the doors created a vertical blind spot when looking in the rear-view mirror, but after a day of driving the Clubman we forgot about it. The car is so small and the doors are cool, so we're fine with the trade-off.

We also want to point out that there's only one back-up light on the Clubman. MINI included it on the passenger side and decided to incorporate an optional rear foglight on the opposite end. We didn't have any issues when backing up at night though.

Our first impression of the MINI Cooper Clubman interior is that there was more focus on creativity and uniqueness than on function and utility. It all looked awesome at night as everything lit up in red, and LED "waterfall" lighting filled the doors, handles, footwells, center console and B-pillars with up to six different colors.

We felt much more comfortable after spending a day with the Clubman though. The window switches are still a bit awkward and finicky because of the long reach to them, especially the passenger window switch. Near those switches are toy-like knobs and buttons for the radio and climate control, and towering over all of that is the massive center speedometer.

The leather-wrapped tilt/telescoping steering wheel was probably the best ever created for a sub-$25k car. It simply felt magnificent in our hands. The texture of the leather was so good, and the wheel diameter and rim thickness were perfect.

The six-way adjustable sport seats on our Clubman are another one of its shining factors. They offered the right amount of side bolstering, without being too constricting nor too flat. We were surprised to find a long lower cushion, which offered a good amount of thigh support and comfort. Most new, cheaper-priced cars seem to have seats designed for short, wide people.

Our friends in the back seats were comfortable with the amount of legroom offered. One even said he was very surprised given the small size of the Clubman. The two-person bench was nicely sculpted and only received rave remarks from everyone who sat in them. There's also a cupholder for each passenger in the back.

The cargo area of the MINI is one area that we liked a lot. It swallowed a lot of "stuff" with only 9.2 cubic feet of space, and offered even more space underneath a covered storage area. When we needed even more than that, the seats folded down and we took advantage of 32.8 cubic feet. We liked the barn doors because of their minimal effort for opening and closing, and especially because of the window wiper on each side.

Speaking of wipers, we didn't like (or atleast couldn't figure out) why the MINI only had speed sensitive two-speed wipers. They became intermittent when the car slowed down, but we wanted more control. After some online research, we found out that the driver has to go through the radio's computer to customize the intermittent speed. On cars with the rain-sensing system it's much easier to just set it and forget it, and we've read that it works very well.

The rear wipers for the barns doors also come on automatically when the Clubman is put into reverse, a thoughtful touch by MINI.

The cool tech of the MINI Cooper Clubman began right when we got the saucer-like keyfob in our hands. The funky shape has a lock, unlock, and trunk lease button. Inside the Clubman, it slides in a port on the dash and the driver then taps the Start/Stop button to bring the engine to life. Though we didn't like the set up at first, we began to appreciate not having to put a key into the steering column and the simplicity of just tapping the Start button when we let go of the clutch too fast.

One unique standard feature for the MINI in its class are steering wheel-mounted audio and cruise control buttons. Checking the option box for the Bluetooth phone connectivity, adds a button on the steering wheel for voice dialing and another for answering and hanging up.

Attached below the big platter speedomter on our base MINI was a radio system with 6 speakers, a CD player, and auto speed volume control. It didn't have much punch so we'd recommend upgrading to the harmon/kardon system and adding high-definition radio.

Our tester came with Bluetooth phone connectivity, but unfortunately no audio streaming capability. Voice dialing is offering but we really liked being able to scroll through our phonebook via the audio system interface. Our calls were clear and loud, but the other line had a bit of trouble hearing us since the MINI makes a bit more road noise than we'd like.

Coming along in the optional Bluetooth package is a USB input that sits directly to the left of the standard AUX input. I couldn't pull songs from my Blackberry via the USB input, but it did charge it, and work flawlessly well with my iPod. There was virtually no delay between song selection and scrolling through playlists, but we found it difficult to go "UP" through the iPod menus through the MINI's audio system.

Lastly, standard on all Clubmans is a computer that displays average fuel/speed, outside temperature, trip distance, and fuel range. It can all be viewed in the pod directly in front of the driver by tapping the end of the turn-signal lever, or by going through the menu in the large center-mounted speedometer. We really liked the digital speedometer function for the small pod so that we never really had to use the larger analog gauge.