Name: 2025 Mini Cooper Countryman
Brand: Mini

Mini Cooper Countryman First Drive

Summary

Introduction

2025 Mini Countryman Is Roomy, but There’s Room for Improvement

Buggy software and a lurchy transmission dampen our enthusiasm toward this otherwise appealing maxi Mini

Overview

We purchased a 2025 Mini Countryman S All4 for our vehicle test fleet. This small SUV is the Mini brand’s largest vehicle, and it has been thoroughly redesigned for 2025.

We know you can’t wait to hear what we think of it, so—as with all the cars we test—we’re sharing our initial hands-on impressions about the Countryman before we put it through our full regimen and give it a road-test score and an Overall Score.

Mini made the Countryman bigger in almost every dimension. It’s the largest Mini ever—about the same size as a Subaru Crosstrek. But unlike the plebeian Subie, the Mini tries to play in the entry-luxury space. It gets an exterior design that looks a bit like a shrunken Land Rover Defender and a fashionable interior with a unique circular touchscreen at the center of the dashboard.

For a model this size, it also boasts a shockingly roomy interior. A 312-hp John Cooper Works performance edition is also available, and an all-electric model is coming soon—we’ll test that as soon as we can purchase one. All three have standard all-wheel drive.

The Countryman has clearly reduced its reliance on nostalgia. That’s not such a bad thing: The Anglophile frills that defined the BMW-owned brand in the early 2000s were polarizing and as authentically British as Austin Powers.

Aside from the driver-selectable taillight motifs, which include a Union Jack design as one option, the new Countryman—built in Leipzig, Germany—has more mainstream appeal to compete on equal footing with the likes of the Audi Q3, Alfa Romeo Tonale, Jaguar E-Pace, Lexus UX, Mercedes-Benz GLA, Volvo XC40, and even the BMW X1 with which it shares an underlying platform.

Gone are fussy metal switches, reminiscent of British-made electronics from the 1960s that never worked quite right. They’ve been replaced by sleek German-made touchscreens that still don’t work quite right. In fact, the whole car feels a bit unfinished. We don’t yet know how that will affect our final judgment of the Countryman, but we plan to spend a lot more time with it to find out.

Impressions

What We Like

Interior roominess

The Mini’s interior maximizes space. There’s ample legroom front and rear, and it’s easy to get into and out of the vehicle. Even though there’s slightly less room for rear passengers, it doesn’t feel constricting. The squared-off design means there’s plenty of room for cargo in the back, too. There are tons of nooks and crannies to stash smaller items, including a pop-top storage box between the front seats and a two-tier shelf in the center console.

Headroom

Mini added about 4 inches of headroom, and the results are truly impressive—at least inside the car. Some of our tallest testers had no issues sitting in the front seat and had room to spare. The interior feels airy and spacious.

Interior design

It’s rare to find a car that feels this special. There’s a cool fabric strip in the middle of the steering wheel, soft-to-the-touch material on the door panels, and plenty of variation in the plastic patterns across the upper dashboard. The upholstery on our Countryman’s seats features a “repeating M” pattern, too.

Visibility

Some drivers said the faraway front windshield, thick side roof pillars, and head-up display took some getting used to, but so far we’ve been mostly impressed by how easy it is to see through the Countryman’s vast greenhouse of windows.

The engine

The base 241-hp, 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder has plenty of power to spare for merging and passing, and its sporty exhaust note adds to the fun. Driving the car in Go-Kart mode unleashed the Countryman’s livelier side.

What We Don't Like

Low-speed hiccups

The Countryman uses a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission (DCT). Although a DCT will choose gears for you just like a traditional automatic, behind the scenes it’s basically a manual transmission with two clutches operated by two robotic left feet. The benefit is that shifts are quicker than a traditional automatic. The drawback is that some DCTs—including this one—lurch and hiccup at low speeds as if those robots had just gotten their learner’s permits.Tap the throttle in stop-and-go traffic or when pulling away from a stoplight and the Countryman lurches forward only to suddenly hesitate. One of our testers said it felt like the car was hiccuping, and a few of our passengers have asked us to drive more gently. It’s just one example of how the car feels like an unfinished project.

That circular screen

In a modern tribute to the original Mini’s round, central speedometer, the Countryman gets a 9.4-inch touchscreen. It’s attractive and unique, but we found that it occasionally lagged and didn’t always respond to our presses.

In addition, the climate controls are only available on the side and bottom of the screen. The temperature controls look like they’d work by sliding a finger up and down on the blue and red gradient, the same way that Volvo’s system is set up. Instead, the user must press the tiny circle where the temperature is displayed and open a submenu. It’s a difficult and distracting task to perform while driving. However, we did like that you could swipe up from the bottom for a customizable shortcut, which made it easy to switch between Android Auto/Apple CarPlay and the Mini’s built-in controls.

The “Experiences” menu

Most modern cars offer a few driving modes—sport, eco, and the like. The Countryman has multiple “Experiences,” but they’re confusing. Some of them are just design themes, while others (Eco, Go-Kart) appear to change the throttle mapping and shift points. However, this isn’t made clear to the driver, who may select an Experience based on how the speedometer looks and end up with a totally different throttle response, or vice-versa.

Unfinished and glitchy software

It feels like our car was shipped with a beta version of its software. Every time we turned on the vehicle, it gave us a warning that it couldn’t recognize its tires. More often than not, the speed limit display showed the word “limit” instead of an actual number.

The CarPlay version of Google Maps displayed in different places on the screen, sometimes obscuring important parts of the map, and music streamed over wireless CarPlay would frequently skip like a scratched record. Android users had more serious issues, with Android Auto restarting itself frequently on the fly. It seemed to work better with Bluetooth.

What We'll Keep an Eye On

Climate control

Our ownership of the Countryman has coincided with a heatwave in New England, where our Auto Test Center is located, but this car’s HVAC system seems to be louder than necessary. Left on Auto, it never seemed to calm down. We do, however, love the air vents—they feel a bit flimsy but are easy to aim with great precision.

Cameras

There are two cameras inside the Countryman. One, at the top of the cabin, is part of the Drive Recorder dashcam setup that—if turned on—can capture a recording of a crash. The other is behind the steering wheel, and the owner’s manual calls it a Driver Attention Camera. We covered them both while using lane centering assistance (LCA) and adaptive cruise control (ACC) and no warnings popped up, which suggests that they may not currently be actively monitoring drivers to see if they are paying attention. As with all driver monitoring systems, we will continue to look into how well these cameras work, and how well they protect data privacy.

Physical controls

Like the original 1960s Mini and the Countryman’s newer predecessors, the 2025 model has an ignition switch in the lower center of the dashboard. But it also has a unique gear selector that’s easy to confuse for the ignition and a Park button that looks a lot like the start/stop button on most newer cars.

Steering and handling

For the first time, the Countryman feels a bit top-heavy, as if it leans into corners. It’s likely a consequence of that taller roofline which makes for such impressive headroom. In addition, there’s a bit of deadness to the Countryman’s steering on center, although it offers plenty of feedback and heft in corners. We haven’t spent enough time in Go-Kart Mode to see if it makes for a crisper steering feel.

Displays

Because the Countryman’s main display for speed and vehicle information is in the middle of the dashboard, we highly recommend using the Countryman’s head-up display (HUD), which projects speed and other vital statistics on a small screen that pops up from behind the steering wheel, interrupted by a view of all the seams and dashboard fabric behind the screen. Most other cars with a HUD project directly onto the windshield, and we wish Mini had done the same—especially because this car’s HUD is integral to keeping eyes on the road.

Safety and Driver Assistance Systems

The new Countryman finally gets blind spot warning (BSW), which was notably absent on its predecessor. We’ll be sure to test the Countryman’s advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) on our new test loop.

However, in the short time we spent using adaptive cruise control (ACC) we were unable to find a simple way to adjust how much space it left in front of the vehicle. A few of us turned it off when we didn’t feel comfortable with how close it got to the car ahead of us. In addition, several ADAS features were greyed out on the display screen, accompanied by a warning that they aren’t available in the U.S.