Mini Paceman

Who could ever imagine an automaker would have suffered such an enormous transformation like Mini did? From the cheap and compact Morris Minor of 1959, after more than four decades BMW took its control and started an entire revolution with the completely reprojected Mini Cooper. Its success became so high that encouraged the arrival of several more versions, unimaginable at the old times. Now this brand has become one of the latest fashion symbols at the cars’ world, which latest symbol is the now revealed Paceman.

If you ask someone from the company about what kind of customer Paceman suits better, the answer would probably list a series of qualities of the their target profile and also list a series of qualities of the car which, for them, can fulfill those people’s needs for a car. You won’t have an answer like “big families”, “early-thirties singles” or “middle-aged parents” simply because Mini is way far from these kind of sales. Their cars are fashion icons and this has started a long time ago, already with the classical Cooper, so they don’t point their products at one particular public. However, since they have to attract the most different kinds of people, this must be their reason to launch so many new versions at so little time. Cabrio, Clubman, Clubvan, Countryman, Coupe, JCW, Roadster, each one has a different proposal but all of them have to follow the same style rules based at the original car, so they end up much alike and therefore competing among themselves for some of their potential customers. Being the youngest member of a family that big leaves Paceman to be defined in more than one way: Mini sees it as the coupe version of Countryman, but you can also think of it as a more opulent Cooper or even a less familiar Clubman.

It’s nice to see that Mini doesn’t make efforts into sharing exterior parts among their cars in order to save money, because the price reduction implied by that would be followed by several design losses which become even more important at this kind of car. So what is seen is a very casual model, with the same overall style of the 4-door version it came from but with a different personality. It’ll never stop looking like a mutated Cooper, but once again they achieved a nice result. Specially at the rear, with clean but well-sculpted shapes and elegant tail lights. Since this one will only have two doors, they’re bigger than Countryman’s ones, and became followed by more bulged fenders, to give an imponence sensation. When entering it, this car reminds again that it is a Mini, so it won’t save any effort into being different of the other cars. There is the same Mickey-Mouse-inspired central console to give a casual air to the room, and the luxury starts by the seats: if this car doesn’t need to carry much people, why bothering to make a rear seat who badly pretends to take five occupants if everyone knows only four would travel with total comfort? Mini has expressed that thought by changing the normal continuous three-people rear seat for two individual ones in a process that doesn’t avoid to remind the upgrade to an airplane’s first class seats.

The front ones still have plenty of space and comfort, but speaking of the rear ones, they can also be folded in order to increase the trunk space from 330 L to 1080 L, making clear that Mini didn’t forget the small families with this car. However, since the off-road side of the family must have been taken entirely by Countryman, Paceman has preferred to be more sporty. According to the company, its has lower suspension and a different chassis. It’ll always use a six-speed transmission, manual or automatic, and can bring the All4 traction system. When it comes to the engines, there are two options with diesel and gasoline each. The first one uses a 112 hp 1.6 or a 143 hp 2.0, while the second comes with the classical 1.6 of BMW and PSA, here with 122 hp or 184 hp. Of course, this will be the biggest debut of Mini at Paris Motor Show, but its sales will start only at March 15th at the United Kingdom, starting at £18.970. And if you belong to the group who read this entire article with a strong but unknown déjà vu feeling started since the first look to the very first picture of this car, here’s the answer you may be looking for: specially from the rear view, doesn’t this car look exactly like a reduced-scale Range Rover Evoque?