Mini Countryman review: Slick cabin and great screen, but too hefty and too blunt to be a true Mini

Mini Countryman EV is 4.43m long, just one solitary millimetre shorter than a 1991 Ford Explorer. Yes, the one that gets eaten by a T-Rex in Jurassic Park.Slick cabin and great screen, but the EV version is too hefty and too blunt to be a true Mini. JCW at least allows a little bit of fun.

Now, though, we come to the third generation Countryman. Whereas that first model was a 4m car, this one breaks the tapes at 4.43m. Doesn’t sound like much of a difference? Well, allow me to quantify that for you – the new Countryman is just one solitary millimetre shorter than a 1991 Ford Explorer. Yes, the one that gets eaten by a T-Rex in Jurassic Park. That was not a small car. And neither is the new Countryman. In fact, at 1.65m tall, I know fully-grown adults who are shorter.

In the centre of the dash is a vast, dinner-plate-sized, perfectly round OLED touchscreen, which at last – literally – squares the circle of trying to have both a touchscreen and an homage to the original 1959 Mini’s central round speedo. It’s a masterclass in how to make a good touchscreen. Our first test drive is of the first all-electric Countryman, and this is the range-topping EV model – the Countryman S E ALL4. That means two electric motors, four-wheel drive, 313hp, 494Nm of torque, and a range of up to 433km from its 64.7kWh battery.

Which is all fine, but with 2,050kg of weight to deal with, this Countryman really struggles on a twisty road. That weight blunts what feels like initial eagerness in a straight line, and mid-corner bumps really, really upset the suspension. You can feel the springs and dampers struggling to contain the mass of all that battery moving about, and sometimes it really feels as if they’ve just given up.

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