MINI hatch gets five doors

Due to be released in Europe before the northern summer, the new five-door MINI hatch will finally pit BMW’s funkier brand in to a head-to-head fight against the likes of Volkswagen Golf’s upper models, the Audi A3 and the Mercedes-Benz A-Class.

The model has also been chosen by MINI to host the arrival of its new four-cylinder turbo-diesel engine, which will thump out 360Nm for just 4.1L/100km, in the Cooper SD.

The five-door Cooper has been a long time coming.

For all of his boundless imagination on how to fill niches with the MINI brand, former CEO Kai Segler missed this glaringly obvious opportunity. While he was busy making a MINI SUV look like a pufferfish, delivering a two-door version of the same SUV and telling journalists to “make your bottom hard so you can feel the stiffness” in the Roadster, he never brought a five-door version of the hatch to market.

That’s changed with Segler’s departure, with MINI finally giving more space, more practicality and yet more size to its most popular model, the MINI hatch.

The five-door's launch phase will highlight MINI's new four-cylinder turbo-diesel which it's expected will become the volume engine for the model. In addition, the same engines that service the new three-door MINI hatch will be offered: the 1.5-litre, three-cylinder turbo petrol motor; the 2.0-litre, turbo petrol four-cylinder in the Cooper S; and the 1.5-litre, turbodiesel three-cylinder in the Cooper D.

The new five-door rides on a 2567 mm wheelbase that’s only 487 mm shorter than the entire overall length of the original MINI. That wheelbase is 72 mm longer than the current three-door hatch.

The upshot is a five-door hatch that ekes its edges out to over four metres long (4005 mm) in Cooper S and Cooper SD forms (the Cooper and the Cooper D shrink back to 3982 mm). That’s a full 161 mm longer than the new three-door, which itself grew 98 mm over the previous three-door MINI hatch.

MINIs aren’t very mini anymore.

There is a cost in weight, too, with the lightest model being the Cooper version of the five-door hatch, fitted with the three-cylinder, turbocharged petrol engine. That Cooper five-door weighs 1145kg, which is 60kg more than the three-door. You can add another 30kg for the six-speed automatic transmission that is an optional replacement for the six-speed manual.

The Cooper D weighs 1190kg, the Cooper S is 1220kg and the new Cooper SD might have the mid-range muscle, but it tips the scales at 1250kg.

This getting-bigger thing needs to have advantages somewhere and in the five-door hatch, it is in the rear seats and in the luggage capacity.

MINI claims the five-door is now a full five seater, with a 60:40 split-fold rear seat capable of accommodating three people. To back it up, they point to a 72mm increase in rear legroom and footroom, a 61mm stretch in interior width in the back seat for elbow room and 15mm more rear headroom compared to the three-door hatch.

With 278 litres of luggage capacity, the five-door has a 670-litre advantage over the three-door, and then its capacity increases to 941-litres with the rear seats folded down (but not flat).

All of the five-door hatches run front-wheel drive, with the Cooper S and SD using MINI’s electronic diff lock, and the wheel and tyre packages range from 15-inch to fat 18s on the Cooper S.

Running the same core UKL architecture as the MINI three-door hatch and the upcoming BMW 2-Series Active Tourer, the five-door hatch uses a sophisticated version of a strut front suspension in concert with a multi-link rear end.

AS noted above, the star of the engine show will be the new Cooper SD powerplant, based on the shared modular architecture, which generated the 1.5-litre Cooper D engine.

The 2.0-litre powerplant is rated at 125kW at 4000 rpm, but more pointedly has 360Nm from 1500-2750rpm.

It promises to be a flexible, strong powerplant and MINI claims it will push the 1250kg manual five-door to 100km/h in 7.4sec (the automatic version is 0.1 seconds faster) and on to a top speed of 225km/h.

It’s economical, too, with MINI claiming an NEDC combined figure of 4.1L/100km for a carbon emissions number of 109g/km.

The most economical of the five-door MINI hatches will be the Cooper D, though its 9.4sec 0-100km/h time is the slowest. The 85kW machine also generates 270Nm but headlines its act with 3.6L/100km and, with 95g of CO2. It’s the only MINI five-door to slip beneath the 100-gram barrier.

We found the 1.5-litre, three-cylinder, direct-injection petrol turbo motor to be the most charming in the three-door family, and it’s unlikely to be too tested by the step up in weight.

It boasts 100kW at 4500rpm and 220Nm from 1250rpm, though this can be temporarily overboosted to 230Nm for overtaking or short bursts. It’s enough to see the Cooper to 100km/h in 8.2sec and to give it a 207km/h top speed, while still using only 4.7L/100km and emitting 109g of CO2.

The Cooper S is the performance flagship, at least until the oft-denied John Cooper Works version comes on stream next year, with a 6.9sec sprint to 100km/h (again, minus a tenth for the auto). With 280Nm of torque (and temporary access to another 20Nm), it shakes out a 232km/h top speed.

It doesn’t drink too much in the process, though, with an NEDC figure of 5.9L/100km.

The five-door hatch will carry much the same equipment packages as the equivalent three-door hatch, plus some trick options like radar/camera cruise control, a parking assistant and a collision and pedestrian warning and initial braking assistance system.

BMW Group Australia says the new five-door MINI Hatch will be a "very late 2014" arrival Down Under. While it's hopeful to have five-doors in dealers for Christmas, the vagaries of production and shipping could mean that the vehicles are not on sale until 2015.

No firm details on the availability of the new SD turbo-diesel four Down Under yet either. At this stage the engine options are expected to "reflect the [three-door] Hatch range" our spokesperson advised.