► New Mini Countryman vs crossover rivals
► Even larger, funkier Mini is here to grab attention
► How does it fare against Cupra and Volvo?
Look at me! No, look at me! Me me me! There’s an outbreak of excitement in the middle of the road, starring the Cupra Formentor, Volvo XC40 and outrageous new Mini Countryman. We’ve brought together all three to see if it’s all just hot air.
Pre-flight briefing: Mini Countryman
Why is it here?
Now in its third generation, the Countryman has shrugged off those who heckle it for not being very Mini. Unlike the bloated five-door hatch and the increasingly odd, now departed, Clubman, the Countryman has always made sense as a compact crossover with a glancing resemblance to a Mini. Sharing its underpinnings with the BMW X1 has helped: the Mk2 drove pretty well. The new Mk3 is at the head of a torrent of new Minis, combustion and electric.
Any clever stuff?
Quite possibly too much. The cabin’s design is now much simplified and majors on unusual, often recycled, materials. At the heart of it all is a 24cm-diameter circular screen in the centre of the dash, where many modes can be juggled.
Which version is this?
There are two electric and three petrol versions, of which ours, the Countryman C, is the lowest, with front-wheel drive and peak output of 168bhp; you can also get all-wheel drive and 215bhp with the S, or 296bhp with the JCW. There are three trim levels for the C and S, Classic, Sport and Exclusive. Ours is the Exclusive, with the addition of the Level 3 pack, and optional paint and wheels.
Read our Mini Countryman review
Pre-flight briefing: Cupra Formentor
Why is it here?
Whatever you want to call this class of car, the Formentor has been designed specifically for it. It’s the first purpose-built Cupra, as distinct from an adapted Seat, drawing on Audi Q3 and VW Tiguan components. It combines bold looks with a family-friendly practicality and a driver-pleasing focus on dynamism. If it drives better than the Mini without being less accommodating than the stylish-but-sensible Volvo, it could be in line for the win.
Any clever stuff?
It may not be debuting any new technology, but there’s a lot of the stuff fitted as standard. Not all the trick chassis gear is reserved for the highest spec or the most powerful models: ours has a decent degree of push-button adjustment for the steering and engine.
Which version is this?
The Cupra comes with a choice of engine: 1.5-litre turbo four, with low, medium or high power outputs, and a choice of two plug-in hybrids. There are manual, auto and all-wheel-drive options. Trim levels start at V1 and wend their way up via V2, VZ1 and VZ2 to VN. Prices go from just over £31k to more than £48k. Ours is modest V2 spec with the 148bhp engine, plus a handful of extras including Beats audio.
Read our Cupra Formentor review
Pre-flight briefing: Volvo XC40
Why is it here?
If the Countryman is a Mini that’s got pumped up until it’s at least one whole class bigger, the Volvo can be seen as an XC90 deflated via the XC60 to become a compact crossover. Whatever its origins, its tremendous looks must have played a big part in its sales success; it manages to look so much more classy and modern than rivals that are similar on paper. Recycled cabin materials keep it green.
Any clever stuff?
Volvo got a lot of flak for the overly screen-reliant infotainment on the EX30, which is particularly odd given how user-friendly the Google-driven, voice-based system on the XC40 is.
Which version is this?
Don’t go thinking that you’re an expert on the XC40 line-up, if your expertise is more than a few months old. Volvo has done a tremendous amount of fiddling with the range most recently by rebadging the electric version as EX40 and the coupe version as EC40. The combustion engines currently available in the XC40 are mild hybrids: 161bhp in the B3, 194bhp in the B4. Core trim starts at £35,895, while our slightly plusher Plus is from £39445. Ultimate, from £44,445, brings Harman Kardon audio.
Read our Volvo XC40 review
The centre of attention: Countryman vs Formentor and XC40
As I point the stubby prow of the new Mini Countryman down a wet, hedge-lined B-road towards my favourite farm shop, I have a small moment of doubt. Am I, I wonder, wasting my time, not to mention my money? Thing is, by the time you’ve added onion, peppers, cheese, mushroom, tomato, mustard and a dollop of HP Sauce, does it really matter what eggs you’ve used in your omelette?
Barn-reared, organic, free-range, richly yolked – it’s all going to taste much of a muchness.
And if the car taking you to the farm shop, or supermarket, or corner shop, or indeed petrol station, is shaped like a pumped-up Mini or a downsized XC90 or a spiky coupe-SUV, it’s the same roads to the same destination. If the experience is mostly about the shopping and the podcast you listened to on the way – and surely for many people that will be the case – then a lot of supposedly key differentiators have failed.
The cars may start out with different intentions, but they all kind of meet in the middle once you strip away the hype. Right?
The Countryman, Volvo XC40 and Cupra Formentor are here to tell me I’m wrong. They are all gagging to show that not all £30k-£40k compact family cars are the same, that there are valuable differences in how they drive and in what they say about you. Increasingly, they also want to persuade us that how they’re made and what they’re made of are significant distinguishing points.
The Volvo is the most known quantity, having been around for six years, although there have been various revisions since then. The range was for a while expensively topped by an all-electric version, but that has now morphed into the EX40, leaving a modest choice of front-wheel-drive mild hybrids. Ours is a B3 in Plus spec. The XC40 line-up currently starts at just under £36k, for the B3 in Core spec, while our Plus can be had from £39,445, although the lovely metallic paint nudges it over £40k.
Experience in various XC40s over the years suggests that it’s actually fine in its most basic form. The shapes, the simplicity, the move away from traditionally fancy fabrics – that’s all designed in.
The Cupra has been around since 2020, but I think it’s fair to say has not made quite the same impact as the XC40. Although Cupras are selling well, and the imminent Tavascan electric coupe-SUV will doubtless boost that success further, the brand identity is still a work in progress. While the Born is electric-only, and shares much with the VW ID. 3, the combustion Leon and Ateca are hard to tell from the Seat versions.
But the Formentor – priced from £31k – is a standalone product, not based on a Seat, and not easy to categorise, beyond wheeling out that iffy coupe-SUV tag yet again. Ours has a version of the VW Group’s excellent 1.5 TSI Evo engine, turbocharged but not hybridised, and front- rather than all-wheel drive.
The Cupra is in relatively lowly V2 trim, priced from £36,050, but doesn’t make you feel like you’re being deprived of anything important. The black bucket-ish seats say you’re not in a hire car, and the general flair of the interior is a match for the exterior, and a long way from many of the VW Group’s plainer products.
And then there’s the Countryman, newly arrived in Mk3 guise at the forefront of Mini’s rather exciting and ambitious new wave. It can be had as a high-performance petrol JCW, or a choice of all-electric versions, or this, a mild hybrid. Which may seem technologically so-what, but is actually plenty electrified enough for many people right now; people who aren’t quite ready for any plugging in, thank you. And in any case, there’s a huge amount going on here regardless of the powertrain.
Outside, the Countryman is significantly different from its predecessor. The front is boldly angular and proudly strong, while the rear is tidy and sleek, and the sides are quite complex but coherent.
Our test Countryman has an absurd amount of extras fitted. The Exclusive spec, which adds £2500 over entry Classic, includes sports seats, and black on the inside and outside of the roof. The Level 3 pack, for £7500, brings a panoramic glass roof, heated front seats, adaptive LED headlights, Harman Kardon surround sound and much more. But that’s actually a bit of a distraction from how much comes as standard in the sub-£30k Countryman: the Experience modes, the roof rails, the heated steering wheel and, most importantly, all that style. Ours also has optional extra-cash paint and bigger wheels.
Only a much longer test will reveal how long it takes before the novelty wears off, but our guess is that it will be a long time, the irrational mood-boost coming every time a new passenger smiles at the freshness and boldness of it all.
If it didn’t wear Mini badges, its Oxford connection would be far from obvious. From some angles, it looks vast, like a slabby Kia EV9. Put it this way, when a postman asked if it was a seven-seater, he was flabbergasted when I told him it wasn’t.
The XC40 remains a fantastic bit of design, clearly part of the XC/EX family, simple and strong-looking, but without any of the macho rufty-tufty nonsense that other crossover-SUVs are burdened with. Ours has optional shiny paint, and you can pay more for a contrasting roof, but neither is necessary.
The three cars’ external dimensions are very close, and the ground clearance similar. The Formentor is swoopier than the other two, with a roofline that descends towards the rear and more curves than the other two put together. There’s a resemblance to a Nike high-top trainer, where the Countryman is a Doc Marten and the Volvo a Hunter welly.
The Countryman’s boot is big for a Mini, but disappointingly small for a car of this size. That said, ours has optional sliding rear seats, part of that – gulp – £7500 Level 3 package. With the rear seats folded down or slid forward, you get a more healthy-looking luggage area. With the seats in their rearmost position, you get actual adult-sized rear passenger space. Our sports front seats (part of the deal with Exclusive) give the rear passengers some unattractive black plastic to look at, but generally it’s a nice environment, with cupholders in the doors, individual heater controls, pockets in the seatbacks and charging ports, much like the others, although the Volvo struggles with the cupholders.
Up front the Countryman is off the charts in terms of style and functionality. It’s roomy and comfortable, and brilliantly uncluttered. The centre console deserves some sort of award. (CAR magazine centre console of the year – there you go.) It has everything you need, and nothing you don’t. Your phone can sit safety. Your bottle is within easy reach, but not in the way. There’s a lidded box for bits and pieces. There’s a tray under the armrest. All of which sounds obvious, but so many others make a mess of it. It’s a car that will never have to accommodate a gearlever or handbrake, which must simplify the job.
The dash-top, here finished in a knitted fabric that feels and looks much better than it sounds, is largely blank, except at night when the ambient lighting goes into overdrive. There’s a row of toggles and buttons under the central circular touchscreen, which among other things start the car, engage Drive and Reverse and the parking brake, and control the volume. The windows are opened by switches on the doors, in a break from Mini tradition.
And then there’s the touchscreen itself, designed to make full use of the shape rather than being a rectangular screen in a circular frame. There’s loads of information here, which may seem intimidating at first, but it’s laid out with such faultless logic that you very quickly get used to it. Bizarrely, the head-up display is rubbish. It works, in that basic info is projected on to a tiny screen just beyond the steering wheel, but looks ridiculously cheap and dated.
One of the toggles is for Experiences which, like BMW’s current My Modes system, is a mix of dynamic settings and tweaks to the look, sound and ambience of the cabin. Sounds complicated, but once you start using it it’s pretty simple.
There are three driving modes: Core is the default; Green dials down the power in a terrifying way that I never wish to experience again; and Go-Kart is what other cars would call Sport. Amid much flashing and whooping (yes, actual whooping), it changes the colour of the touchscreen and the cabin lighting, but it also brings greater dynamic sharpness, which can in turn be manually tweaked up to Sport Plus or down to Comfort.
There are also a bunch of other modes (Trail, Vivid, Timeless) that don’t affect anything substantial. But if you want to have a massive brown speedo as if you’re about to cross a desert, or a beige one that looks like it’s made of Bakelite, then you can do that. And everyone you overtake at night will see this, as the interior is highly visible after dark. People will notice. Some of them will be unpleasant about it.
Anything risks looking ordinary next to this tour de force, but the others acquit themselves well. The Cupra’s interior is familiar VW Group hardware and software. At a glance, it’s quite Audi, although to the touch it’s oddly cheap-feeling in places. Some of the plastics make you yearn for a bit of knitting.
The sloping roofline makes it less roomy in the back, but it’s okay for adults if they’re prepared to slouch. The driver gets an infuriatingly slow infotainment system and not enough physical buttons, but a roomy armrest cubby and decent cupholders.
The Volvo looks much more spartan, but is in reality every bit as comfortable. Front and rear, you’re positioned more upright than in the Cupra, but the thin-looking seats are supportive in the right places and everyone gets a decent amount of room. The C-pillar can feel like it’s reducing your view out, though.
The modestly sized touchscreen, with a row of physical buttons and a dial underneath, may look a little dated now, but it’s fitted with Google’s automotive interface, which means just about everything you’d want to adjust on the move – radio station, temperature, destination – can be done by voice. I usually hate these things, but not this one. It just works.
And there are no driving modes. What a relief. Volvo’s engineers have set it up well enough, and your job is to just do the steering, braking and accelerating. The odd bit of indicating would be widely appreciated too.
The Mini is the most powerful car here, with marginally better performance figures, but the bigger difference is in how it feels. Not sporty as such, but agile and very responsive. The accelerator pedal in particular feels like it’s directly connecting you with the characterful three-cylinder engine, and the steering is quick and accurate. The brake pedal feels slightly vaguer, but the power is all there.
The ride quality suffers slightly on some surfaces from having optional 20-inch wheels, but generally it’s unruffled by bumpy roads, and keeps bodyroll in check when you’re getting a move on.
The Cupra is more conventionally sporty, and makes good use of the VW Group’s proven 1.5 TSI Evo engine. It’s the only car here with paddleshifters to override the auto ’box, which ups the sense of engagement hugely, and it steers and rides well. On certain roads, you can get into a good rhythm and make pleasing progress.
A pity that it’s so loud – and not for the first time with a Cupra. There’s a harshness to the sound as the revs rise that is doubtless meant to be exciting, but soon grates.
The Volvo barely tries to compete. It’s rapid enough to keep ahead of traffic, and drives with an easy amiability that doesn’t ask any hard questions and doesn’t offer any surprising answers. The steering doesn’t employ much precision, and the suspension is happier at the lower end of the performance spectrum, such as it is. If you’re seeking ten-tenths thrills, dagger between your teeth, you have very much come to the wrong place.
Three cars with engines, then, but not cars defined by their engines. In a few years’ time the engines will have disappeared from the configurators, but what will remain is their character, of which all three have plenty.
For now, all three have remarkably similar fuel consumption figures, despite their different takes on combustion – three-cylinder mild hybrid, four-cylinder mild hybrid, turbocharged four. Over the course of several days, all were tested on the same roads and in the same conditions, and ended up with consumption figures even closer than their WLTP stats (while, of course, being thirstier than those official figures would want you to believe).
With any of these cars, you can pay more money to get extra power, and hybridisation, not to mention immense quantities of cosmetic and technological fripperies. But this test has confirmed our belief that for everyday family use you’re generally best off looking at the more affordable end of the price lists.
This Formentor is not radically simple like the Volvo or radically weird like the Mini; it’s just good. The Volvo benefits from not being weighed down by extras: what’s best about it is its simplicity. The Mini is far from simple, and yet never feels dauntingly complex.
The Countryman is going to annoy some people with its zany Heston Blumenthal ‘hey kids, let’s fricassée some moss for lunch!’ vibes, but all that soon fades into the background. The fundamentals are fantastic. You’ll enjoy driving it, enjoy being a passenger in it, enjoy seeing it outside your front door, enjoy exploring what it will do and where it will take you. Yes, it’s trying very, very hard. It’s the full organic barn-fed free-range gender-fluid monty. And it’s glorious.
The final reckoning: Countryman vs Formentor and XC40
Random sampling suggests the XC40 is one of those cars that its maker thinks will lower the average age of its customers by 20 years, but which actually has huge appeal for the mature buyer. Yes, the discerning, stylish, sophisticated mature buyer, but mature nonetheless. It’s just so easy to get in and out of, so easy to drive, so easy on the eye. It also gives the impression that it will never break down and never look dated; only time will tell if that’s true, but we’d put money on it.
The Cupra has more of a ‘yeah! party ’til dawn!’ energy to its looks and detailing, which may or may not tickle your fancy, but ultimately it’s well served by its VW Group hardware. The rotten infotainment is no less annoying for its familiarity.
The Mini has gone out of its way to be modern and youthful and in-your-face. It’s the full neck tattoo; if you’re over 40 you’re going to raise eyebrows with your Countryman. Nothing wrong with raising eyebrows, but you need to be ready for it.
Some of which is smoke and mirrors. Because on a rainy Thursday in Derby, for instance, they’re all utterly competent and largely practical to live with, and once people have stopped pointing and winking you’ll forget what they look like.
And they’re all pretty decent for rear-seat passengers, too. The Volvo doesn’t have a great view, and the Cupra discourages tall adults, while the Mini’s relatively generous legroom is only possible by squeezing the boot space. Still, they all work just fine as family transport.
What’s far less interchangeable is how they drive. The Volvo is a neutral transportation pod. If, in a few years, an over-the-air update should turn it into a self-driving car, XC40 drivers everywhere will just shrug and let go of the steering wheel. They won’t be missing out on much.
The Cupra is far closer to traditional ideas about what a good driver’s car should feel and sound like. It offers a decent level of performance – the sort of pace you can use on the road on your way home from work – and enough feel and feedback to keep the driver interested. Just as well that it provides some entertainment, because you’ll struggle to hear what’s on the radio above the sound of the hard-working engine.
We’ve placed it last, but think of it as third best. The Formentor is a perfectly good car, and its ranking highlights how good the others are.
Verdict: Countryman vs Formentor vs XC40
First place
Mini Countryman
Gloriously absurd in its digital gimmickry, but never at the expense of the fundamentals: it’s comfortable and fun
Second place
Volvo XC40
Simple, elegant and easy to get on with; just don’t expect any thrills
Third place
Cupra Formentor
Perfectly decent all-rounder, but it feels very ordinary in many ways next to these rivals