MINI Cooper S five-door 2014 Review

Take a look at the new Cooper S five-door hatch and you might think MINI has scrambled after a few thousand more sales by just stretching it and bunging a couple of doors into the newly-elongated bit.

But the new MINI '5 door' is a lot more important than that for MINI, given the BMW Group is hoping for far more than just 'niche' sales – including in Australia, where it arrives late this year -- so it has put a lot more engineering and design work into it than a casual glance might reveal.

It's the second MINI off the BMW Group's new UKL1 architecture (after the new three-door hatch) and it's the by far the longest.

The five-door hatch market is twice the size of the three-door market, according to MINI's board member, Peter Schwarzenbauer, and this move has been a long time coming and will help keep maturing families in the MINI brand. (Which is what we thought the Countryman was for.)

There is another 72mm of metal between the front and the rear wheels, and its 72mm more legroom indicates that all of that extra metal has been dedicated to giving space and comfort to those perched on the new three-seat rear bench.

The back seat is also 61mm wider at the elbows and there's a corresponding boost in luggage space, which jumps up 67 litres to 278 litres and includes a false floor and rear seats that have a space-boosting forward tilt function to go with their 60/40-split, folding capability.

Yet while MINI is pitching the five-door as a premium hatch to go head-to-head with the Audi A3 and even the upper echelons of the Volkswagen Golf, the reality is somewhat different.

At 3997mm, it's just a single millimetre longer than the five-door version of Volkswagen's Polo (though the more masculine nose and intakes of the Cooper S versions make it a few millimetres longer again, at 4005mm) and it's line ball with Audi's five-door A1 hatchback.

The interior packaging reflects the numbers, too, with even a short rear seat base failing to hide its Polo-like rear legroom. Yet the MINI will cost significantly more money than either of the VW Group hatches.

For all that, the five-door is significantly reworked over its three-door sibling, with the most glaring addition (other than the squarish rear doors) being the framed windows. MINI design boss Anders Warming insists MINI had to switch to framed doors because they made it easier to get in and out of the back seats, but it also meant everything from the front guards back is new. Except the tail-lights.

The roof is obviously all new but so are the A-pillars and the hatch is also new, with a different rake angle and a new, slightly big butt, and some small rear shoulders behind the D-pillar.

It tried to keep the same style of chiselled glasshouse and floating roof and nearly (but not quite) succeeded. In the process, it pushed the roofline up 11mm and the rear metalwork stretches outwards by the same number.

Inside, everything from the front backrests forward is carried over from the three-door, including the new multi-media screen and its new graphics and its funky switchgear. There you'll find the colours changing depending on whether you're in the Sport, Normal or Comfort modes.

Because the Cooper S is front-drive, MINI could drop the three-door's powertrain straight in without a single change, which is good for MINI's production processes, but also good for customers because it's a very good powertrain.

The 2.0-litre inline four-cylinder engine is one of the leading players in BMW's new generation of engines, all based around "ideal" 500cc cylinder dimensions and includes variable valve timing and lift, direct fuel-injection and variable-geometry turbocharging.

It's good enough to give the five-door version of the Cooper S a sprint to 100km/h in 6.8 seconds (the six-speed manual is a tenth slower) despite its extra 60kg of mass. It is still, after all, only 1220kg.

Its peak 141kW power figure is spread from 4700rpm all the way up to 6000rpm, while the 280Nm torque peak is flat from just 1250rpm to 4750rpm, and it can be briefly overboosted to 300Nm. That means the torque thumps in at very low revs and the engine is still delivering it peak torque when the power curve hits its stride.

The numbers suggest a very strong, flexible motor, which is precisely how it plays out in the real world.
Though it lacks the meaty aural charm of the Cooper's three-cylinder powerplant, the engine is nonetheless smooth and fuss-free in everything it does.

Best mated to the slick six-speed automatic transmission (whose 20kg penalty is worth it in the long run), the engine is superbly flexible and will willingly deliver swift reactions and speed to even the laziest of anti-gear shifters.

It's quiet when you want it to be and fast when you want it to be, but it won't frighten anybody by surging unexpectedly or getting nasty anywhere and it has just about the best usable rev range of any volume four-cylinder engine going around.

You can change the car's attitude by flicking a ring around the gearshifter to select Sport, Normal or Comfort modes. The engine is at its most endearing in Sport mode, where responds to hard work by popping and burbling cheerfully whenever you come off the throttle, but reacts sharply and instantly whenever you get back on it.

There's never a time when the engine is wanting for propulsion and it seems equally happy at 1500 revs, pulling a tall gear just as well as it does sweeping beyond 6000rpm in search of a straight-line sprinting time. It just sounds less deep at higher revs, but steadfastly remains just as smooth.

It's reasonably economical, too, especially for a motor displaying this sort of all-round gristle. Its NEDC combined figure of 5.4L/100km is half a litre better than the manual version can manage and MINI boasts that it scrapes by on 4.5L/100km on the highway.

The engine's steadfast composure is reflected in the rest of the all-around dynamic package of the five-door Cooper S, with the handling feel just a touch off the three-door version due not so much to the extra weight itself but to the higher location of it.

The steering gets meatier in the Sport mode, but the ratio doesn't change. It feels like it does, though, and that's largely because the handling package changes with the optional two-step damping rates.

It rides on the same 16-inch wheels and the same 195/55 R16 tyres as the shortest MINI (though 17- and 18-inch versions are optional) and it also gets the Dynamic Stability Control (which gives more freedom in corners than the standard system) and the electronic 'limited-slip' differential and Dynamic Traction Control.

Where the Cooper S hatch switches direction with alacrity, the five-door changes direction with a more solid purpose, though it doesn't lose much.

It actually gains in longer, faster corners, where its wheelbase helps it to feel poised and calm, but it loses just a touch in sudden direction changes and only the shiniest bits of the three-door's sparkle have dimmed for the driver. It still has grip to spare, though, and feels utterly composed and unthreatened in delivering it to the driver.

It gains, too, in ride quality, even on the notorious longitudinal ruts of English B-roads, with the MINI's underdaks doing a superb job of telling the driver enough of what's happening below decks without tiring the driver with a constant stream of unnecessary chatter.

Things fall down a bit inside, especially for the argument that the car is an A3 five-door rival. It just isn't.

It's too small in the back to start with, and its overall look isn't as integrated, either. The back seat isn't a poor place to be (except in the middle), but it's not Golf-comfortable -- much less A3.

There isn't the room and there isn't the feeling of room provided by the German rivals. There isn't the airiness in the cabin, either, because maintaining the wedgy MINI glasshouse has given it a small block of glass that doesn't let in enough joules of light.

Worse, though, is that the funky switchgear that gives the shorter version so much of its stand-apart character just feels immature in a package that aims at a more adult market.

Everywhere you look from the driver's seat, you find a different kind of switch. There are the aircraft-style toggles in the centre of the dash, there are chromed, curved plastic numbers for the window winders in the door, there are chunky flat ones on the infotainment controller and the steering wheel is busier than a Middle Eastern diplomat.

All of this, plus the minimalist door trimming, just feels at odds with the ambition here, especially viewed from the rear seats.

There is legitimacy in MINI's claims that it will help it retain people whose space requirements develop beyond the three-door hatch, because I think everybody knows at least one person who has moved on from MINI for exactly that prior shortcoming.

The danger is that its female-buyer heartland will move as a bloc to the five-door, in spite of its less cohesive visuals, and leave the three-door to the male buyers of Cooper S and JCW models. MINI, though, doesn't think this will happen.

Time will tell. In the meantime, it's a hard job to rationally recommend the five-door to anybody, even if that feels horribly harsh on an emotional level.

If you're buying MINI for charm, you get a bigger dose of it in the three-door. If you're looking at it for practicality, you're at the wrong brand to maximise your metal-for-money ratio.

Even if you want to spend this sort of money on a premium hatch, you'll get a bigger one for the same money over at Audi. Or Volkswagen.

Yet the engineering is at least sound in most areas and is downright sparkling in others, so the MINI 5 door is intrinsically a very good car. But there are just so many questions…