More doors and space return as Mini debuts new five-door Cooper

Although revealed last year BMW has added a second bodystyle to the new Mini Cooper range in the form of the returning five-door variant in combustion engine C and sporty Cooper S guises.

How much more space?

For now, omitting the electric Cooper E and SE that debuted the newcomer, the internally named F66 Cooper – the E and SE carrying the designation J01 – is again based on the UKL1 platform, but with an overall length of 4 036 mm, height of 1 464 mm, width of 1 744 mm and wheelbase of 2 567 mm.

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Dimensions which translate to a length and wheelbase gain of 172 mm and 72 mm respectively, the five-door also comes with a height increase of 32 mm, but retains the same width.

Its length having resulted in more boot space that ranges from 275-litres to 925-litres versus the three-door’s 210 to 900-litre capacity, the five-door’s aesthetic is otherwise unchanged bar the obvious inclusion of the rear doors.

Same same otherwise

As such, alloy wheels sizes again range from 16 to 18-inches, with the four exterior trim levels being carried over from the three-door; Essential, Classic, Favoured and JCW.

The same applies to the interior where apart from the increase in space, the 9.4-inch OLED infotainment system with Mini’s version of its parent 9.0 operating system has been retained, along with the Experience mode selector that debuted in South Africa on the Countryman last week.

Lacking any form of leather upholstery replaced by the Vescin textile made largely out of recycled plastic bottles, the five-door has, however, received a number of dynamic changes.

These include new anti-roll bars, retuned steering and the first-time option of frequency selective adaptive dampers.

No electric help

Up front, and again similar to the three-door and the South African-market Countryman, the Cooper five-door lacks any form of electrification, meaning outputs of 115kW/230Nm from the 1.5-litre turbocharged three-cylinder engine in the C, and 150kW/300Nm from the 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo in the Cooper S.

In terms of performance, the Cooper C will get from 0-100 km/h in eight seconds and reach a top speed of 225 km/h, while the v-max for the Cooper S is rated at 242 km/h and its acceleration from 0-100 km/h completed in 6.8 seconds.

Regardless of the engine, power is directed to the front wheels only through the seven-speed Steptronic dual-clutch transmission.

EV confirmed, combustion not

On-sale before year-end, the five-door Cooper has so far not been confirmed for South Africa similar to the three-door.

Given that both the Great Wall Motors (GWM) assembled Cooper E and Cooper SE have been approved for the local market before year-end, don’t be surprised if an announcement confirming the combustion models emerges at some stage this year.

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