The new five-door Mini hatchback has been revealed, and is set to give the brand the biggest sales boost of any single model so far. BMW insiders believe it could outsell today’s three-door model by a factor of three to one. It is thought that this new model could account for around 1,50,000 units annually, massively boosting Mini’s sales overall.
Internationally, the five-door Mini will go on sale with the choice of three-cylinder Cooper petrol and three-cylinder Cooper D diesel engines, and in four-cylinder Cooper S petrol and Cooper SD form. A six-speed manual gearbox is standard while the six-speed Steptronic torque-converter automatic transmission is optional. Despite being a physically larger and more capacious car than the new Mini three-door hatch, the five-door version is not expected to be too much more expensive.
Measuring a compact 4m from nose to tail, the five-door is 72mm longer in the wheelbase than the three-door and 161mm longer overall, with the extra wheelbase length going entirely into the rear cabin. BMW says the new car also offers 15mm more headroom and a useful 61mm of extra interior width “at shoulder height”.
Boot space is now 278 litres, up 67 litres on the three-door. With the 60/40 spilt rear seats both folded, the Mini’s maximum load capacity is 941 litres. BMW’s engineers have gone beyond simply increasing the basic load capacity of the Mini five-door and added a number of neat features to improve the utility of the car. There’s the option of a folding false boot floor which can be fitted at two different heights, the upper of which allows a completely flat load bay when the seats are folded forward. Unusual extendable clamps have also been fitted to the rear seatbacks, allowing the backs to be locked in an upright position in order to further increase the load space.
The rear doors are short, although the height of the door aperture aids access to the rear cabin for taller adults, and while the front sports seats fitted to the car pictured here are substantial, their backs feature a large cut-out to accommodate the knees of taller rear passengers. The low roofline is also relieved inside with a ‘scooped-out’ headlining, which offers surprisingly decent headroom. While getting in and out requires some agility, a six-foot-tall rear passenger can sit behind a similarly sized driver, albeit with just a few millimetres of knee and head clearance. In the front, the new dashboard intrudes on the driver’s sense of space and the seating position remains unusually low, but there’s a decent amount of shoulder-room for two adults.
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