Gadgetory

being a car maker today without a crossover almost unheard of so how did many make it this long without one well no matter it's here now let's drive the 2011 Mini Cooper S Countryman all4 and check the tech it sports a new face for many for bucket seats for wheels driven if you like and five doors a first for these guys but when your mini the most important thing is to make sure every mini is clearly am in to push the boundaries too far and you can lose all your models so what is a countryman well first of all this is a big part of the store you got a lot more cargo space in one of these guys as you can imagine by the overall packaging in fact twice as much interior space as a standard mini it's got higher ground clearance got longer wheelbase our car is equipped with an optional dual pane panoramic roof it's got a little more of an off-road II look because as you can see on ours it's an all four it's got all-wheel drive but they don't all have that that's an optional level on this car and they can also be had as an S which our car is or not and one thing about a Mini is you always know you're in a mini because the speedometer is Mexi and that's iconic for them though increasingly silly to me yes it's the size of a dinner plate it's basically just a speedo with some idiot lights and the segmented fuel gauge but you know I've kind of tired of the stick at this point this is a BMW style display with a mini style set of controls I actually like how simple and clear it is you know I see so many elaborate screen based displays sometimes it's kind of nice to go back to simple and this one's very effective now on the input side your basic sources are am/fm HD radio and Sirius with a full year of Sirius by the way quite generous and an ox Jack's standard analogue Hawks down here upgrading like you can upgrade to Harman Kardon on the output side you can also upgrade to getting this guy here that's a USB plus iPod and you've got a little pigtail you use with that it's one of these dealios here it goes into aux and USB and it's got iPod on the other end now they tell us and I think it's true they've upgraded the materials the plastic on the dash and the whole fitting here in this guy it is a little nicer graded materials a little more toned down but there's something ways to customize this thing who knows what yours will look like one thing yours will have it's very novel is this a set of aluminum rails here kind of like one of those really expensive European rail systems people with their bicycles on runs here all the way down through the back seats which by the way our dual buckets there's no rear bench available on this car and what you do is you clip accessories in there for example here's a cell phone holder you put the little ears down in there like that and you click it into place the only problem is I can't put it where I want it because they've got this part blocked here a whole bunch of it because they had to leave room for this the parking brake handle although I would like to put my phone right here right in front of it I'd be okay with that now sort of so it's more kind of promise than it is theory now I've got the base gear box here it comes with a six-speed manual this vehicle great big old vintage style knob you can also get an automatic that's optional extra cost it would have paddles on the wheel with the LCD connected head unit you'll also want the free connected app it uses your phone for Google search and send to NAV streaming web radio driving efficiency analyzer the ability to compose non canned updates for your social media accounts by voice I assume and it now has a new feature called dynamic music that doesn't just increase the volume the faster you drive but also ramps up the tempo I think I might hate that okay under the STEMI little hood up here on this guy we've got a ninja that's quite familiar this is at 1.6 litre inline-four turbocharged a twin scroll turbo real BMW lineage type stuff generates 181 horsepower 177 foot-pounds of torque when it runs this is the first time on a car Tech we've had a car flat-out die well as I was saying 177 foot-pounds of torque 0 to 60 B about 7.3 seconds with the manual seven point seven with the automatic transmission while delivering 25 31 mpg now I'm going to go restart the car well that's that what I'm thinking a bill me for the car yes our minis engine did tank when idling during our shoot never started again went home on a flatbed now that doesn't mean anything statistically but Consumer Reports does they slot the 2011 minis near the bottom for predicted reliability my single gripe about driving the countryman S all4 is that it seems the nummis mini now when you lean into it especially in sport mode it's a lively point-and-shoot thing it's that other 90% of your driving where I found it the least fun of their line that stuff I call nibbling anything from stop and go to just stoplight to stoplight driving here the countryman has all the torque of a moped unless you jump on the gas pedal which I don't do all the time so that makes most everyday driving kind of tedious all of us on the car tech team complain that we kept dumping the clutch and killing the car because it has zero low rpm guts okay let's price a countryman our guys top and so it's 27 6 base because we've got the S turbo motor the all for the all-wheel drive now on top of that you got to spend several grand to go seen that style first of all I'm gonna get this thing called the Premium Package that gets me the dual panoramic roof I get automatic temperature control and the Harman Kardon audio upgrade then go for convenience and connected that's 2 grand for six and a half inch LCD voice command USB plus iPod smartphone integration auto dimming rear view rain sensor the full keyless access deal and all of that and then on top of that two thousand dollar package you add in 750 more to build navigation into that screen and of course you're going to want the mini connected app we killed the car today it's alright that was a short shoot