Join the Clubman; First pictures of the latest Mini on sale in November

Evening Chronicle (Newcastle, England), August 10, 2007

Byline: By STEVE HUGHES

THESE are the first official photographs of the new Mini Clubman which will go on sale in the UK on November 10.

Available from launch in three engine variants of Cooper D, Cooper and Cooper S, the new model has five doors instead of just three and is slightly stretched.

The designers say that its inspiration comes from the Morris Mini Traveller, Austin Mini Countryman and the Mini Clubman Estate of the swinging sixties.

The newcomer is 24cm longer than the existing model, giving 8cm more legroom for rear passengers and the boot capacity is increased to 260 litres with the seats in place and up to 930 litres with them down.

Access to this extra space has been made easier via the split rear doors and an innovative 'Clubdoor' which opens on the right-hand side.

The Clubdoor is hinged at the back on the right-hand side of the car and opens against the direction of travel.

For safety reasons this door can only be opened when the front door is open. It does not need an outside handle and, therefore, blends into the body so that it appears not to be there - just as in the case of the rear doors of some Alfa Romeos.

New or modified engines designed specifically for the second generation model incorporate improvements to optimise fuel economy and emission management.

These include auto start-stop, brake energy regeneration and a gearshift point indicator, which help the Cooper D Clubman to achieve a low emissions figure of 109g/km of CO2.

The Clubman is the next body style in the Mini range to join the hatchback and convertible models, which have sold more than a million since 2001.

All will be built at Oxford, where pounds 100m has been invested in the last two years to increase Mini production to 240,000 vehicles a year by 2008.

The petrol engines will be assembled in the Midlands at Hams Hall in Warwickshire and the body panels and sub-assemblies are from Swindon, involving a total of 6,800 production jobs.

The prices of the new Clubman models have also been announced.

They are pounds 14,235 for the Cooper, pounds 15,400 for the Cooper D and pounds 17,210 for the Cooper S.

CAPTION(S):

STYLE AND LOADS OF SPACE - the new Mini Clubman, which goes on sale in November, showing the split rear doors which make for easy to access the boot space; INSPIRATION - the original swinging 60s Clubman; INNOVATIVE - the Clubman with the invisible right-hand Clubdoor at the rear