The 2025 Mini Countryman SE: Whimsy doesn’t make up for annoying
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I'm not sure space efficiency is a brand any more than "LOOK HOW CUTE I AM I'M SO CUTE TELL ME I'M CUTE" is, but I definitely think the design language has become a trap.
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YetAnotherAnonymousAppellation
Ars Praefectus
Remember when Minis were actually "mini?" This thing looks to be big enough that it is the same volume as 2 original Minis. If we were allowed to import the available tiny EVs from elsewhere, Minis would have no market, except for nostalgic hippies.
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To be fair, real estate agents generally have it in their contract somewhere that they're not allowed to drive a car older than X number of years. It's an image thing for clients.
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Yup. And it has to be a premium brand, but not so premium the clients think they're getting taken advantage of. Basically, the reason the Lexus RX350 exists.
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i think its a tad unfair to criticise any car for individual Bluetooth or charging speed issues when both those have so many variables that can affect overall quality.
unless its widely reported as an issue by many users that is.
unless its widely reported as an issue by many users that is.
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One day at work there was an Alec Issigonis' Mini parked between two "compact crossover" SUV, did it look tiny - the new Mini Countryman the other side, less so
The larger version of the mini was a Maxi - perhaps they should revive that name (it was not a popular car and last designed by Alec Issigonis)
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You bring up an interesting point: how do suspensions of (generally heavier) EVs hold up on our potholed roads? I see your Indiana pothole and raise you a Michigan one - a state where even our Jeep (!) injured its suspension...
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Haven't had a problem here, knock on wood. Though I've never fucked a tire in any pothole. I don't know if I'm lucky or just careful.
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From Eastern ontario Canada, lots of potholes: to quote my local mechanic who i've known for, 30ish? years...
a few years back: "i'm wondering how long we'll be in business when EV's are more commonplace"
Now:? "I love EV's: tires and suspensions: we make a fortune"
(Last fall when I was in for my winter/summer tire swap: four Tesla's in the parking lot: 3 of them for suspension work...)
Not a huge sample set of course...
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“... but it suffers from the electronic gremlins that seem to affect all cars from British automakers”
Lucas, Prince of Darkness, is a very powerful wizard!
Lucas, Prince of Darkness, is a very powerful wizard!
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That driver gage design is what happens when marketing thinks that comic book movies are fantastic, and then they dictate the display design. It's Buck Rogers all over again.
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At 2.1 m wide and 1.7 m high, and weighing 1.7 tonnes, it's not exactly "mini". Maybe in the US market it is.
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I've seen mostly negative comments here and I am also surprised by the author's comment.
The Kona EV doesn't compare well to the Countryman SE, in my opinion. As mediocre as the circle UI feels, I found it less overwhelming than the Kona wall of screens experience. The HUD I wish was a more traditional gauge cluster or screen simulating a gauge cluster (this is from the show floor so I can't say for sure if I'd get used to it), but I preferred the Mini experience to the Hyundai experience.
The driving feel of the Countryman is not even close to that of the Kona. I would put it in the Corolla (Kona EV) drive feel versus Civic (Countryman SE) drive feel territory, which is honestly an apt parallel relationship. The Countryman is also standard AWD against FWD from Hyundai, and while it'll obviously kill the range, the Countryman SE is supposedly tow rated for 2600 lbs which can get you a teardrop trailer or other small things (and the dealer I visited suggested that tow rating was conservative).
I don't own a Countryman SE after driving one, but the prospect was more appetizing than the Kona EV by quite a margin.
The Kona EV doesn't compare well to the Countryman SE, in my opinion. As mediocre as the circle UI feels, I found it less overwhelming than the Kona wall of screens experience. The HUD I wish was a more traditional gauge cluster or screen simulating a gauge cluster (this is from the show floor so I can't say for sure if I'd get used to it), but I preferred the Mini experience to the Hyundai experience.
The driving feel of the Countryman is not even close to that of the Kona. I would put it in the Corolla (Kona EV) drive feel versus Civic (Countryman SE) drive feel territory, which is honestly an apt parallel relationship. The Countryman is also standard AWD against FWD from Hyundai, and while it'll obviously kill the range, the Countryman SE is supposedly tow rated for 2600 lbs which can get you a teardrop trailer or other small things (and the dealer I visited suggested that tow rating was conservative).
I don't own a Countryman SE after driving one, but the prospect was more appetizing than the Kona EV by quite a margin.
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Very few EVs compare nicely in the weight department. Its length and width however are indeed mini in the US market, and compare to some of the smallest cars we have on the market. We don't really have things like the Toyota Yaris anymore, for example.
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I wouldn’t rely too much on those surveys that you (helpfully, thank you) linked to.The R56 generation (circa 2007-15) had reliability issues, most notably with carbon buildup that plagued a number of direct-injection engines of that era. But the F56 generation of this past decade has been damn near bulletproof.
https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2019-us-vehicle-dependability-study-vds
https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2024-us-vehicle-dependability-study-vds
They only cover the first three years of vehicle ownership! Even GM seems to have figured out how to keep their vehicles from falling apart for that long—but I digress.
I mean: I guess that kind of survey data is useful, if you’re the type of buyer who can afford to trade-in your vehicle every 2-3 years. For everyone else: the Toyota, Lexus, Honda, Acura, Mazda, and maybe Subaru vehicles are going to be ‘just getting broken in’ at the 3-year mark; with lots of trouble-free life left in them.
Other brands? . . . Yeah, GOOD LUCK
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To me it looks like a low-end Six Flags ride. I mean, I get the concept (profits, so fuck practicality), but god, why the fuck in the middle of the dash when everyone and God is used to glancing a little lower to see their driving data?
Yeah, OMYAC here, but I instantly loathed it.
I don't see it being a popular vehicle for that, and many other reasons that have also been mentioned.
it looks cheap. That's not a good look for the Mini.
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Being in the middle isn't an issue. Mini has been doing that forever. I had a Scion that did it. No big deal.
But it needs to be comprehensible. This isn't.
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From experience, if the system is laggy by the time it's seen by third parties, there's some really core problem that can't be easily fixed.
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We have one of those -- the actual driving experience is good, plenty of power, nice ride. But the controls are abysmal, nearly everything is done through the touch screen. There's a voice response system, but it rarely understands what I'm asking "Turn off the seat heat" "I'm sorry, I don't know what that is" "Turn off the drivers seat heat" "Drivers seat heat is off"
We had a 2022 Mini SE (2 door EV) and that was a fun car - low to the ground, lots of power for its small size, and most importantly, buttons and switches for nearly everything. Its biggest drawback was that it only supported Carplay, not Android Auto, well, that and the short 100 mile range.
The range is also a drawback of the Countryman - we get around 210 miles on a full charge, but on a long trip we don't like to let it get below 20% (so we have enough charge to go to an alternate charge station if needed), and don't charge over 80%, so we only get around 120 miles of usable range between charges.
My wife still loves it though -- she loves it because it's "cute", she likes the "Mini look", but we wanted something a little bigger than the 2 door SE.
We had a 2022 Mini SE (2 door EV) and that was a fun car - low to the ground, lots of power for its small size, and most importantly, buttons and switches for nearly everything. Its biggest drawback was that it only supported Carplay, not Android Auto, well, that and the short 100 mile range.
The range is also a drawback of the Countryman - we get around 210 miles on a full charge, but on a long trip we don't like to let it get below 20% (so we have enough charge to go to an alternate charge station if needed), and don't charge over 80%, so we only get around 120 miles of usable range between charges.
My wife still loves it though -- she loves it because it's "cute", she likes the "Mini look", but we wanted something a little bigger than the 2 door SE.
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And of course all the Chinese cars you are locked out of access to by your government.
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The Ioniq 6 is a 4-seater, but still reasonably small and affordable, starting at less than $40k. Or at least it was
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Mini was taken over by BMW to give them a lower end sub-brand without eating into the brand image
Smart is now being used by Mercedes as its lower end sub-brand, with the largest Smart being similar in size to the B series. I suspect Mercedes will eventually drop the smaller part of its range.
Yet both of them began as sub-3m cars (well OK the original Mini was just over 3m over bumpers.)
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I do not wax nostalgic about the original Mini's. Had a friend in my college days with a highly hot rodded one. It may have been more about his approach to driving it but it seemed akin in safety to a shopping cart with a karting engine.
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You are aware that the 2-door Mini Coopers do exist, right? And that those are not much bigger than when BMW reintroduced them? And a big part of the reason why things like the Countryman exist is because that's what Americans buy. Across the board, this isn't just a Mini thing.
I get that the Ars crowd doesn't like big cars, but busting a company's chops for selling what people actually buy is just weird.
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Really good point. Maybe BMW should get around that by reintroducing the Austin Maxi? (please don't, it was horrible first time round):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Maxi
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Only if you buy a Morgan, in which case a mere “yes” doesn’t quite cover it.
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I went shopping for a mini last July, and sat one of these or equivalent at the dealership. They are awful. Much too big and heavy to be minis and whoever thinks we should get rid of physical toggles for touch screens needs to be shot. The dealer was despairing because he said no one likes them and they don’t handle like minis. Stupid decision by bmw but what do you expect these days. So I bought a used 2021 countryman S hybrid instead and love it. Dozens of toggles and switches! Manual controls for everything. And cheaper since it’s used. Win win.
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Doesn't handle like a Mini, true. But it's a very nice step up from the Toyota suspension in the nearly-identically-priced BZ4X. It's also way less of a boat than the Prologue/BlazEr, though those are preferable for a number of reasons in my opinion.
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I test drove a MY 2025 Countryman (ICE) last year (haven't driven the EV variant), but as I'm used to driving a
2016 Countryman, I thought the new Countryman was just awful.
It's too big for what it tries to be, I think it's ugly (subjective, I know), no steering feeling to speak of, the center console is very distracting, and the gokart mode noise is just silly. I pushed it a little bit to see if I could pretend it was a sports car (it isn't) and was met by a strange smell from the breaks after a very short while.
Re distracting console: Article photos show the layouts, but especially the green Eco bird background keeps changing at every traffic light, drawing attention to itself from the road.
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We have special hire ones for the kind of American who is amazed that we have electricity and don't live in mud huts.
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The main thing I learned in Michigan was get steel wheels instead of alloys if possible. They don't bend as easy and are cheaper to replace if they do.
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It's a cultural thing. We have conservative dentists, the US has interventionist ones.
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I will say the Subaru system has gotten better, so maybe an iteration or two will fix this one. For Subaru, the version present in my 24MY Legacy is leaps and bounds better than the videos I saw complaining about it a few years back demoed.
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I always assumed it was because the NHS didn't cover dental work.
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No, actually. There has been fairly extensive research - British people are less image conscious and less interested in purely cosmetic procedures, but our overall dental health is equal to or better than the US.
I have a private dentist here and I recently had quite a lot of work - a root canal, 5 crowns - and it cost less than a single root canal and crown for my brother in the USA. I don't know why US overheads are so high.
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I've heard arguments that it's due to malpractice lawsuits and the resulting high insurance costs. I don't know if that's true or not. I'm always skeptical of answers that boil down to "people have too many rights."
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A friend with an excess of patriotism bought an Austin Maxi around the time I bought a Citroen GSA. Both theoretically had hydraulic suspension.
One of the two was agricultural.
The other one paid its way when we nearly got cut off by the tide at Lindisfarne and it just lifted up its skirts.
Why can't manufacturers bring out cars with variable height suspension any more?
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In terms of achieving its goal of providing the primary dashboard display for the driver (or, more to the point, failing to in any coherent fashion), I'mma christen it an "instrument clusterf*ck".
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