Mini Countryman: Cramped and Overpriced
Mini sells two cars in India:
Cooper — petrol
Countryman — electric and less cramped than the Cooper.
→ This review is for the Countryman.
The Countryman is a crossover, an EV.
+ Unique look — unlike most cars that are just variants of two templates(“SUV” and “sedan”) with different logos slapped on. The Countryman stands out and grabs attention when it drives by.
+ The distinctive styling continues inside with a tasteful blue-themed interior.
- The driver’s seat has a massage feature, which is a bad idea since drivers should be focused, not distracted.
- At ₹72 lakh, it’s overpriced. The Creta and the Windsor are both better cars for 26 lakh. In fact, you can buy both for the price of the Countryman, and end up with two superior cars.
- The tyres are huge.
Comfort
- The driver’s seat is extremely cramped. My stomach feels pressed and uncomfortable. I had to loosen my pants before I could begin driving. This is worse than most cars, and immediately disqualifies the car for me.
+ The steering wheel tilts and telescopes.
- Headroom is insufficient. The windshield header is huge.
- Neither the windshield nor the windows are panoramic. It feels like riding in a locked metal box.
- The Mini lives up to its name, but most of us nowadays want comfort, not miniaturisation. We want a comfortable car or a comfortable sofa, not a mini car or a mini sofa.
+ 10-way electrically adjustable seat:
Slide the seat forward or backward
Recline more or less
Raise or lower the seat
4-way lumbar adjustment: increase or decrease the lumbar support, and move it up or down (to provide support to your lower or mid back)
Unlike the Creta’s 8-way electrically adjustable seat, you can’t tilt the seat base to increase or decrease thigh support.
+ Being an electric car, it accelerates smoothly even when I floor it.
- From 110 kph onwards, it bounces too much. This reduces traction and is unsafe. So this is not the car to buy if you regularly drive fast.
- When coasting1, many EVs do regenerative braking, slowing down the car, which I eventually have to compensate for by accelerating. These deceleration - acceleration cycles make the ride uncomfortable2 compared to if coasting regen could be turned off. It can’t, in this car. The coasting regen afflicts all modes, but Sport less.
- The sport mode is jerky even when driven briskly (not like a grandfather, but not like a racer, either). And passengers will find it even more jarring3. This is the worst sport mode of all electric cars, and among the worst of all cars I’ve driven. Unfortunately, you have to use it to access the full speed of the car.
- The brake is oversensitive — the car stops with a jerk even when I’m gentle.
- In Comfort mode, letting off the accelerator even after mild acceleration causes deceleration, resulting in the passenger’s head and shoulders moving forward a bit. This doesn’t happen in other cars. Presumably in those cars, the motor is throttled down gradually, while the Mini cuts power abruptly.
- I can’t honk comfortably with one finger, as I’m used to, since the horn needs force.
+ The accelerator is anchored at the bottom, so flooring it exercises my right ankle.
+ Auto hold makes stop-and-go traffic easier.
- When I change modes, I get a loud chime. When switching to Sport, the car shouts “Yoohoo!”. This nonsense can’t be turned off or reduced in volume. Sport is also called “go-kart”. Non-standard naming causes confusion.
- There’s a pop-up screen behind the steering wheel, but it’s blocked by the wheel itself. It’s not a real screen — just a piece of glass with projected info, like a HUD. But what’s the point? They could’ve just as well used a regular screen. A true HUD projects onto the windshield where you can’t use a screen because it would block your view, so projection is justified. But in the Mini, it’s not. It’s just bad design — they had an idea, and it didn’t work, but they shipped it anyway. It’s like designing a laptop, realizing you can’t fit a battery, and shipping it anyway — now it’s neither a good laptop nor a good desktop.
Electric
- The brake doesn’t recharge the battery, unlike better EVs.
- When driven close to the top speed, the range dropped to just 183 km. Buy this only as your second car, for city use. Even the salesman said that.
- The range indicator is extremely inaccurate, showing 440 km when fully charged4. It should be configurable: I should be able to go into settings and set 183 km as the range when fully charged, and let it scale down linearly with charge.
- The car doesn’t come with a trip planner / charger locator. This is a deal breaker for an EV. When using a third-party app, you’d head towards a specific charger, but if your battery is low, you may not make it, and be stranded. To prevent this, the app needs to know the battery level so it can suggest a reachable charger. This calls for a trip planner app made by the manufacturer of the car. It can live in the car or on your phone and read the battery level via CarPlay, but it should be a Mini app. But Mini has dropped the ball.
Cooling
+ My fat red Thermos fits in the door.
+ Dual bottle-holders in the center.
- No ventilated seats
- No cooled glove box
- Quasi-panoramic sunroof with a center bar, which is not as beautiful as a panoramic one. It doesn’t open smoothly — sounds like it’s fighting resistance. When the 26 lakh Creta gets both right, why can’t the 72 lakh Mini?
- No physical AC controls, which is unsafe.
Digital features
+ Cool circular screen
+ The UI design is unique and interesting. It looks like a physical dial. When other cars try to show an analog speedometer on the digital instrument cluster, it looks like a bunch of pixels. The illusion falls apart. Whereas the Mini maintains the illusion. It’s beautiful, skeuomorphic design, reflecting the mechanical nature of the car. I could imagine all the gears and drive shifts inside, as if the screen were transparent.
- CarPlay is restricted to a rectangle. It can’t be full-screened5.
- Wireless-only CarPlay. I prefer wired because it’s reliable and charges the phone.
- I used my iPhone’s volume buttons to adjust the car’s speakers, but it didn’t work.
+ 2 USB-C ports
+ 12V socket
- The music system isn’t as good as the Creta. Music doesn’t have the same emotional impact the way it does on the Creta.
- You can adjust the bass and treble up or down starting from 0. Zero bass, rather than sounding neutral, sounds anaemic.
Front passenger seat
+ More spacious than the driver’s seat (thankfully)
+ I can stretch my legs fully
+ Good headroom
- Still feels closed in since neither the window nor the windshield are panoramic.
Rear seat
- I can’t stretch my legs
+ Good headroom — better than most cars
- Small window
± Doesn’t beep if a seat belt isn’t worn.
- The rear seat is really uncomfortable — I was tossed around when going over a small road bump that every other cars handles without fuss.
+ Dual USB-C
- AC vents can be opened, closed or partially opened but not angled! The air doesn’t reach my face. In summer, this alone disqualifies the rear seat for me.
+ Burnt orange theme — stylish, but inconsistent with the blue theme visible from the front seat. It feels like a different car.
Boot
+ Good space
+ Comes with a light
+ Electric tailgate
± No spare tyre
+ Run-flat tyres
- No frunk — should’ve been there in an EV.
In summary, the Mini Countryman is cramped and overpriced.
That is, when neither the accelerator nor the brake is pressed.
They also reduce range since converting kinetic energy to battery charge and then back loses some power.
Passengers feel more discomfort during jerky driving because they’re not anticipating it like the driver is. Their bodies don’t brace instinctively, making every jolt feel sharper.
It showed 194 km remaining at 44% charge, which I extrapolated.
Each app needs to redesigned to support circular screens, which isn’t a good use of time for software teams, because most cars have rectangular screens. And if apps display in a rectangle anyway, a rectangular screen works better. Compatibility beats theoretical improvement.