Mini has added a pair of doors to the erstwhile hatchback to create the new-for-2014 five-door Mini hatch. It’s a sign that the BMW-era Mini has come of age, and Munich is attempting to broaden the fashionistas’ favourite city car to appeal to families as well as Foxtons estate agents in London.
The five-door Mini will arrive in UK showrooms in autumn 2014, priced from £15,900. So you pay a £600 premium for the extra pair of doors.
It’s the first time that a Mini has been offered with two rear doors; to date in the BMW era, only the Clubman’s solo suicide rear door has eased access to the back row.
Mini 5dr hatchback: what else is new on the family Mini?
In case you couldn’t tell from these first official photos of the five-door Mini, they’ve taken a bicycle pump to the cartoonish Mini profile and inflated a few extra psi in every dimension.
So the Mini five-door hatchback’s boot is now stretched to 278 litres (up a third on the minuscule three-door’s loadbay), while rear-seat passengers now benefit from 72mm extra legroom and the provision of a third rear pew.
How big is the new Mini five-door?
It’s within a whisker of breaking the four-metre barrier which has traditionally framed the supermini sector. The five-door Mini stretches to 3982mm long, 1727mm wide and 1425mm tall. Yes, this new family-friendly Mini is longer than a Ford Fiesta.
To interpret the five-door Mini’s footprint in more easily digestible form, consider this: it’s 161mm longer, 11mm taller and exactly the same width as the three-door Mini hatchback. To increase the space for baggage and bodies, the wheelbase is hauled 72mm longer.
Engines on offer in the five-door Mini hatchback
A range of familiar Mini engines will be carried over to the new, larger hatchback – and Mini has confirmed the Cooper SD for the first time in this third-generation Mini range. The key choices are:
Mini Cooper 136bhp 1.5-litre 3cyl
Mini Cooper S 192bhp 2.0-litre 4cyl, 0-62mph 6.8sec
Mini Cooper D 116bhp 1.5-litre 3cyl, 78.5mpg, 95g/km
Mini Cooper SD 170bhp 2.0-litre 4cyl, 0-62mph in 7.4sec, 68.9mpg
Not all performance figures are available yet.
The Mini five-door hatchback is built at Plant Oxford alongside the other variants of the Mini family.
Pricing at launch stretches from £15,900 for a Mini Cooper five-door hatch to £20,050 for a Cooper SD five-door hatch.
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