10 Oct 07
The front half is pure Mini hatch, which adds to the surprise when you overtake someone and - wa-hey! - you've got vertically split rear doors. The surprise is even greater if they overtake you and notice that behind the driver there's a suicide door, or Clubdoor in Minispeak. Standard equipment on the £14,235 Cooper includes a CD player, lots of safety kit and tinted rear glass. Our car also had four and a half grand's worth of extras including sports suspension, 17" alloys, sports seats and air con, but no sat nav, which we were regretting on our fifth lap of Edinburgh city centre.
We were expecting the Clubman to go down well in the Scottish capital, but we were taken aback by just how quickly it got the thumbs up. We hadn't finished clambering out, grappling with the big, heavy doors, which like to do their best to keep you in, before there were already people peering in through the tinted rear windows.
They knew exactly what they were looking at and they were as keen to find out what we made of it as we were curious about their reaction to their first sighting of a Clubman. Cool, they said. Exactly like the hatchback to drive, we said. And then we all admired the rear doors and half-admired the suicide door.
It goes without saying that the Mini is a good thing in town: small enough to get through gaps and park in borderline spaces, yet powerful and agile enough to keep ahead of the herd and provide a bit of fun in the process. But it's worth stressing that - despite being a heavier, longer, taller car than the hatch, with a longer wheelbase - the Clubman felt equally agile on the twisty roads on our 120-mile route from Aberdeen through Balmoral Forest to Edinburgh.
