Video: 2008 Mini Cooper S Clubman

Now, for 2008, there's a MINI Cooper Clubman, which is essentially a stretched version of the Cooper Hardtop. Now, with the change here comes some advantages, and some trade-offs. One of the obvious advantages: longer cars means more interior space. Now, there's an access door here, a third door, that has only on this side that lets you get into the back seat. So, the door makes it pretty easy to get in. There's two and a half inches more leg room, which that actually is significant when it comes to leg room measurements. As you can see, there are two seats back here. I could not sit behind this seat with it in the farthest back position, but there's more room for you to share with the seat in front of you. (seat cranking) That's a little tight too. Another advantage is more cargo room. Now, instead of a liftgate, we have double doors, Dutch doors. They're spring-loaded, and the doors open, leaving the tail lights behind, which people seem to think is pretty cool. Now back here, you have 61% more cargo volume, behind the backseat in the Clubman version. This one has the net, for securing items, and also there is under floor storage. And then when you put the seats down, you get 37% more cargo volume than the maximum in the non-Clubman version. Now there are, trade-offs, also pretty obvious, because the car is longer, about 10 inches longer, starting about here. You can't fit in as many parking spaces as you could. The regular Cooper is Cars.com's number one urban car, for that reason. Also because the wheelbase is a little bit longer and the car's longer, the turning circle is now a foot wider, 36 feet, roughly, which makes it wider than, not just a lot of subcompacts, but some of the compacts like the Honda Civic. Now, one thing we thought would happen, with the longer wheel base, would be a softer ride. Unfortunately, this being the Cooper S Clubman, the sportier version, it's still rides pretty firm. And on the way here, I'm not making this up, we drove over some chicken wings, that looked like they had bounced off a truck in a pan, and it felt like they were two dozen. So to be clear, we really liked the MINI Cooper in general. It's a phenomenon. We love to drive it. There are some things that bugged us in the regular one that still bug me in the Cooper Clubman. So I'll go through them. One is the sunshade, isn't really much of a shade, it's a mesh. So it doesn't block the sun, it doesn't block noise, and it doesn't block cold in the winter either. Also the center speedometer here. When I look at this thing, what do I see? I see a giant, glowing fuel gauge. I see a bunch of dots, I see lines, but I don't see is miles per hour numbers. Actually, they're on there, but it's a very busy display. And for some reason, the center armrest is bugging the crap out of me. It has this shallow storage area in it, but I keep finding that this thing's opening when I don't want it to. You can't adjust the height, this is the only one. And the seams on the side here are really rough. So when you're reaching for your seatbelt buckle, scrape yourself up pretty good. There is a drawback to the design of the rear doors, and that is you get a pretty big pillar right in the middle of your rear view. And this car has always had a relatively small rear view mirror to begin with, and that puts it plop in the middle. So there you have it, it's a less mini MINI, with the accompanying pros and cons, and some of the old ones too. <v Narrator>For additional information on this car, or any other, go to Cars.com and our blog Kicking Tires.