Mini Countryman interior

Size isn’t the only compromise the Countryman has to make to mix it as a full-sized family car. Where Mini hatchback owners will be used to sitting lower at the controls, with their legs outstretched in front of them, the Countryman’s driving position feels notably more perched and bent-legged (to make space for second-row occupants). It’s not very ‘Mini’ ergonomically, then, but more evocatively so in other ways.

There’s a medium-sized steering wheel but no conventional driver’s instrument binnacle. Instead, both instrumentation and multimedia graphics are carried on a central, circular infotainment display that’s roughly the size of a dinner plate. 

The upper door cards, like the dash, are upholstered in a knitted textile that’s 90% recycled, with a bold colour fade running front to back – which I quite like. The chunky, upright interior door handles are a little too easy to break a nail on, though.

Illya Verpraet

Road Tester

This is an OLED display, Mini proudly crows, brighter and more crisply rendered than it might otherwise be, and clearly a homage to the Smiths' central speedo of Sir Alec Issigonis’s original Mini. It’s much larger than the original Mini’s instrument, though, at 240mm across; it can be interacted with only via the touchscreen or voice command, rather than by a physical cursor controller; and it has some particularly bright, stylised display modes that can adversely affect your night vision.

If you want only instrumentation from it (rather than sat-nav mapping etc), you can tap the upper display portion to enlarge it into a set of full-screen digital dials. Also, unlike in a Tesla Model 3 or Volvo EX30, Mini does offer a head-up display, which places at least some useful instrumentation information close to your natural line of sight, so you don’t have to look away from the road quite so often. In our view, though, this ought to be a standard-fit item, not an option, since it makes a significant contribution to ease of operation.