10 Oct 07
The original Mini had it. The BMW Mini has it. Does the new Mini Clubman have it too?
We're talking about that incredible appeal, across barriers of gender, age, race and heaven knows what else. Millions of people, it seems, love the Mini. Others don't go that far, but nor do they hate it.
This can't go on for ever. Or can it? The MkII BMW Mini caused far less of a stir than the MkI, but its sales are nonetheless going through the roof. Maybe the Clubman is the one: a Mini too far, something so blatant in its retro pastiche, so determined to be a little bit zany.
To find out if there's any kind of backlash in the offing, we took a Clubman to two very different places: confident, wealthy, cosmopolitan Edinburgh and none-of-the-above Blackburn, which to put it generously, is undergoing a period of renewal.
Our car was the Cooper, rather than the turbocharged Cooper S or the diesel Cooper D. You'd hesitate to call it the basic version. It may have a relatively modest engine - the 1.6 jointly developed with Peugeot and built at Hams Hall - but it's a flashy, cocky vehicle even in its humblest form.
