There’s a novel written by American author Nelson de Mille, in which the hero leaves his home in Long Island, New York and returns 10 years later. The biggest change he notices is that everyone is suddenly driving SUVs and he is rather cynical about this seemingly illogical switch. These vehicles are bigger, heavier, take up much more space, and yet don’t seem to offer too many other benefits, especially when they are often driven by families consisting of one member!
We’ve all gone along with the SUV or Cross Over gig, but does it make that much sense?
From an enthusiast’s point of view, SUVs have to be a compromise. If you enjoy driving, you know that the closer you are to the ground, the smaller your car, the better your car will grip the road, because when a car needs to change direction, the laws of physics apply, no matter how clever the engineers who build them are.
If your car weighs 50 or 100 kg more than the otherwise identical car next to yours (this is why racing teams spend thousands of hours trying to find ways to lighten cars), the car you are driving will lose traction at a much lower speed when attempting to take a sharp bend.
The lighter car will turn into the corner more sharply and its tyres will hang on for dear life in mid -corner at higher speeds than the heavier car. Pure physics.
The taller car will suffer too
The same applies to centre of gravity. The lower the centre of gravity, the better the car will stick to the road
Journalists who attend a lot of new model launches will have heard product specialists going into raptures about how the Mk III version has shed a total of 40 to 50 kg compared to the Mk II version, and expound the virtues of better fuel consumption and a whole lot more.
Of course, when these same marketing types are introducing the latest SUV or Cross Over, it is remarkable that weight saving rarely gets mentioned. This is because SUVs are heavy, far heavier than their sedan equivalents. They are also taller, which means their centre gravity is higher. It also mans they have to displace more air when travelling at speed, which means they use more fuel.
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Which leads us to the new MINIs
The newest versions of the MINI Clubman and Countryman were put at the mercy of a bunch of journalists a week ago in the heartland of Mpumalanga driving country, and what a great experience it was. To drive these sports-orientated cars on near-empty roads of the undulating bend-after-glorious bend variety was motor-head entrancement.
One of the biggest tricks BMW performed when they took over the Mini brand from Rover in the early 2000s was to ensure that dynamically the newly named MINI lived up to its maxi reputation for going around corners quickly and effortlessly, with a huge dollop of driver-involvement thrown in.
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The John Cooper Works All4 Countryman
The latest John Cooper Works engines are seriously endowed. Their outputs of 225 kW and 450 Nm of torque are the biggest ever in MINI history, and they are available in Hatch, Clubman and Countryman form.
The first MINI we tried on the launch was the JCW Countryman, and we came away impressed. Acceleration is rated at 0-100 km/h in 5,1 seconds and it does this all effortlessly through an 8-speed Sports Steptronic (conventional automatic) gearbox. All-wheel-drive means grip is prodigious, and what I liked about the car was the way the front end grip was signalled clearly through the fat-rimmed steering wheel.
You pretty much always know where you are in a corner with the Countryman, What I would have liked more, strangely enough, was an engine with a more charismatic note, and perhaps a rev limit closer to 7 000 rpm. Impressive, yes, but perhaps almost too refined nowadays!
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The Mini Cooper S Clubman
By comparison, the Mini Cooper S Clubman is almost tame, at least on paper. The 2,0-litre four-cylinder turbo is tweaked to produce a (comparatively) moderate 141 kW and 280 Nm. Sprinting abiility is rated at 7,2 seconds for the Clubman, well shy of the Countryman’s straight-line prowess.
And yet….I immediately felt seriously enthralled by the Cooper S Clubman, coming off the experience with the JCW Cross Over.
The Clubman is sleeker, you sit in it, rather than on it, and even though our car was not fitted with the optional paddle shifts, this motor comes with a 7-speed dual clutch gearbox. Straight away the Clubman felt sharper, and a lot of that is down to the more immediate shifting of the dual-clutch gearbox. Apparently BMW (MINI’s parent company) isn’t happy that the dual-clutch gearbox can deal with the JCW’s 225 kW at this stage, but we look forward to that day when it comes!
Weight and centre of gravity is king in the mountains.
If ever you doubted the importance of weight in a car’s dynamics, you should try this experience of hopping from a (similarly configured) more powerful heavier car into a lighter one. The Clubman Cooper S has front-wheel-drive as opposed to the JCW's all-wheel-drive, and this too may have made the Clubman feel sharper.
But if you look at the figures, there is a story to tell. The Countryman is 16 mm taller, 33 mm longer and 22 mm wider than the Clubman. Its ground clearance is also 24 mm higher than the Clubman’s.
But the biggest difference is in the weight. At 1 630 kg, the Countryman is some 240 kg heavier than the Clubman, and that difference is huge when it comes to dynamic ability. Impressive though the MINI performance Cross Over is, the Cooper S with 84 kW less than the Countryman JCW, felt by far the sportier car.
It’s turn-in was intuitive, its grip effortless – with the Countryman you always felt you were working for it, with the Clubman everything felt as comfortable as pulling on your favourite pair of slippers!
So what does the Countryman have going for it?
Definitely not looks. Those proportions still don’t look right. But there is space, but not that much more. It runs on the same wheelbase as the Clubman (1 822 mm) so effectively there’s not more leg room for the five occupants. There is more head room, but not that much, and more luggage space. The Clubman’s 360 litres of normal boot space is not that far off the Countryman’s 450 litres, and with the seats folded flat the difference again isn’t huge (1 250 litres vs 1390 for the bigger MINI).
Why do SUVs and Cross Overs enjoy such an increasingly large share of the market?
I think it’s a case that many people feel safer, more remote up in their in their ivory-tower SUVs and smaller Cross Over versions. And of course, there is the (rather illusionary) impression that there is so much more space in an SUV.
In a South African context, maybe many people feel more protected from hi-jackings and general hassling at traffic lights in the metropolitan areas. And then there is another factor.
Like that guy in Nelson de Mille’s book observed, these SUVs seemed to have sprouted up like mushrooms. The problem is now, there are so many mushrooms, that you can’t see past them to the forest floor anymore. Despite all the dynamic drawbacks, poorer fuel economy, extra cost and all, when it comes to SUVs it’s becoming a case of: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ’em.
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