The jury's out on the new five-door MINI

I AM reserving judgement on the latest MINI until I get myself behind the wheel.

Over the past 13 years we’ve had a MINI convertible, a MINI estate, a MINI coupe, a MINI van and much more so it’s still hard not to get the impression that every possible permutation of BMW’s brilliant British-ish hatchback for the 21st century has already been invented.

With the notable exceptions of a reinvented Riley Elf and a Moke for the 21st century the MINI is the automotive My Way, because there are only so many different cover versions you can do.

Which is why I need to reserve judgement on the latest offering - the new MINI five-door hatchback.

On paper it sounds like just another hatchback - the ingenious twist on the MINI formula this time is, in their own words, that “two additional doors facilitate entry to the rear, where three seats are available”.

The MINI five-door hatchback is, in fact, a hatchback with five doors!

Some reviewers have been quick to say the new model is no better proportioned than the Morris Marina Coupe before it went out of production.

Another asked how the new model, which enjoys its official world debut at next week’s Paris Motorshow, can still legitimately be called a MINI when it’s so much larger even than the three-door car it’s based on.

However you must appreciate that beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder.

Don’t get me wrong – if my experiences with the visually challenging MINI Countryman are anything to go by it’ll be a hoot to drive and impeccably built.

It’ll also have that MINI trump card of a wonderfully detailed interior – in fact, I still don’t think most other manufacturers have caught up with 2001’s original MINI, 13 years on!

I’ll reserve my own judgement until I’ve driven it, but a MINI five-door hatch does prompt one very big question. Why? Stay tuned for the answer!

I want to put the brakes on one of my motoring pet hates

PETER KAY would have been proud of the perfect comic timing with which I rediscovered one of my motoring pet hates the other night.

Four of us had spent a very long day working at the Goodwood Revival – an enormous celebration of the cars, clothes and culture your mum and dad used to enjoy in the early 1960s – and we’d broken out of the long traffic jams on the nearby roads to venture into nearby Chichester for dinner. While we’d all embraced the 1960s theme and were dressed from head to foot in marvellously silly period costumes, I’m ashamed to admit the car I’d brought along was a not even remotely period, 11-reg Volkswagen Passat.

A truly accomplished cruiser of a car, but one with a nasty surprise.

It was just outside the city’s branch of Pizza Hut that I nosed past my chosen parking spot, flicked the gear lever into reverse and gently backed the German repmobile favourite into the bay perfectly, the VW badges on the alloy wheels lined up perfectly with the painted white lines on either side.

As I switched off and we clambered out of the car I turned to my colleagues to share my smug moment of Passat parking prowess.

“Never let it be said that Mr Simister can’t park a car”. As I finished my sentence I was met with a mixture of shrieks as the Passat started rolling forward, as though it were on a mission to turn the adjacent Italian restaurant into a drive-thru of its own accord. The people of Chichester were treated to the sight of four men – three of them dressed in tweed suits and the other as a 1960s F1 pit mechanic – fleeing a runaway Volkswagen. 

I realised my moment of motoring brilliance had been cruelly taken from me - by the electronic parking brake!

I’ve driven a couple of cars equipped with such devices, and I hate all of them because they replace something perfectly good with a system that’s as best clunky and at worst downright dangerous. The Pizza Hut parking calamity might have generated an entire night of mickey-taking at my expense, but a couple of us did find it genuinely trickier to set off on hills without the finesse a proper handbrake affords you. The split second you have to wait for the computerised system to strut its stuff, we found all too often, was that split second you needed when pulling out at a busy junction.

What was wrong with the old-fashioned handbrake? It is, like the manually-operated gear lever, a perfectly good device that’s being slowly phased out by car makers. I’d love to be proven wrong by one that works properly, but until then I’ll maintain they just aren’t as good as the proper handbrakes they’re increasingly replacing.

Next year, I’ll have to embrace the Goodwood period thing properly and go in my MGB. Largely because it doesn’t roll into Italian restaurants when you park it.

Jaguar XE - why it deserves to succeed

FORGET Euro 2016. The most realistic chance of watching England going up against the Germans and giving them a comprehensive thrashing is in the car mags, sometime next spring.

It’s not often you get three hugely important automotive unveilings within a week of each other, but that’s precisely what happened when the Land Rover Discovery Sport, Mazda’s new MX-5 and Jaguar’s XE all waded into your Twitter feed at roughly the same moment. For what it’s worth, it’s the unveiling of only the fourth MX-5 in 25 years which pressed all my petrolhead buttons, but that’s a small, open top sports car enjoyed by hedonists in search of a hairpin bend in the Welsh countryside.

The XE, on the other hand, could very well be the most important new car launched this year. Largely because it offers to take the fight to the BMW 3-Series and Audi A4 and actually win. A victory which – and I know Jaguar Land Rover is owned by an Indian conglomerate – would be fantastic news for UK Plc.

It’d be a particularly hard-earned result if the Jaguar’s new saloon did pull it off because – in a well-established tradition of so-near-yet-so-far established by England’s footballers on their business trip to Italy back in 1990 -  the company got so close to pulling it off originally with the X-type 14 years ago.

It was far from a bad car, essentially being an improved and upgraded twist on the hugely accomplished Mk3 Ford Mondeo, but even being that wasn’t quite as talented as the contemporary 3-Series, and as a result few BMW salesmen lost any sleep over the British upstart. All anybody remembers about it now is it being a bit of an also-ran in terms of sales figures and (unfairly) that it’s a Mondeo-in-drag.

The XE, on the other hand, has got everything going for it. It’ll be keenly priced - £27,000 should get you into the entry-level version – and comes with the exactly the sort of small diesel engine which has helped the 3-Series storm past the Mondeo to earn the top spot as Britain’s favourite big saloon. It’ll also be rear-wheel-drive (which is important, given the X-type was also castigated for being propelled by the ‘wrong’ wheels) and it looks like a younger, fresher version of the XF, which is a bit like Dannii Minogue looking like a younger, fresher version of Kylie.

Obviously, the real proof will be out on Britain’s roads in a few months time, when we’ll discover whether England really has scored the automotive equivalent of 5-1 over BMW and Audi. If it has, expected every motorway outside lane to be packed with XEs this time next year.

Mazda - please don't ruin the MX-5

AT 2am tomorrow morning (4 September) petrolheads will be treated to an event that’s only happened three times in the past quarter of a century. Mazda will unveil a new MX-5!

Regular followers of Life On Cars will already know I’m a big fan of the rev-happy Japanese roadster and its appetite for British B-roads. In fact, I’m now on my second MX-5 (and before points it out, I know it’s badged as a Eunos), and I’m yet to tire of its never-ending appetite for a blast down the nearest country lane.

It is the one car which - no matter how many times I hear the hairdresser gags – earns the respect of even the most hardened cynics by blending traditional sports car thrills with pretty much unshakeable levels of reliability. I’m the fifth motoring journo I know at Classic Car Weekly’s offices to have owned one, and even a mate who’s been firmly of the MGF-is-better mentality for years surprised me by rocking up in a Mk2 1.8 Sport version the other day. The MX-5 is, I’ve long maintained, the best small sports car ever made.

That’s why the unveiling of the fourth generation car in the early hours of tomorrow morning is such a big deal.

Mazda itself said itself earlier this year the winning formula for what’s gone on to be the world’s best selling sports car is a lightweight design and perfect front-rear weight balance, so every keen driver from Norfolk to North Virginia will be hoping Hiroshima’s best engineers haven’t forgotten how to make a cracking car.

Jeff Guyton, Mazda’s European president, said: “The MX-5 is the product that best epitomises Mazda’s convention-defying spirit and our love of driving. “It has been grabbing people’s attention for 25 years, and with the new generation model we’re aiming to share this passion with yet another generation of drivers.”

Fingers crossed, then. Mazda, please don’t muck it up!

How to ruin one of Ford's finest efforts

IMAGINE sitting down, glass of champers in hand, to watch the perfect theatrical performance.

It’s a hit new play which has received rave reviews in all the papers – including, naturally, The Champion. The venue offers a view of the stage unobscured by even the tallest of fellow showgoers, and acoustics Bang and Olufsen would be proud of. From the off, you’re gripped by a script blending all the best elements of Shakespeare, Noël Coward and Willy Russell, delivered by an ensemble cast comprising Dame Helen Mirren, Martin Freeman and Timothy Dalton.

You’re hooked, and as the first act draws to a climatic close Richard E.Grant launches into his finest soliloquy since he quoted Hamlet to a pack of wolves at the end of Withnail and I. Yet mid-sentence, amid this bout of theatrical perfection, a work experience student wanders onto clumsily onto the stage, knocks over one of the props, and looks at the leading man with an expression so exasperated it kills the whole performance stone dead.

“Am I on yet?” he asks pointlessly, but it’s too late. Consider your night ruined!

That’s how I felt after spending the best part of 500 miles with a Ford S-Max last weekend, gorging myself on everything from narrow country lanes to motorway outside lanes. 

While it’s starting to show its age it’s hard to deny that it looks great for a people carrier – a box on wheels with added seats, essentially. Its Mondeo-based underpinnings make it far more fun than any slab-sided diesel family wagon has any right to be, and the car’s star leading light, in the form of the 2.0 litre, TDCi turbodiesel engine, delivers a gutsy and reassuring performance.

It’s still my favourite people mover, but there’s a place in hell reserved for the automatic transmission.

The PowerShift system is like the work experience student ruining Richard E.Grant’s greatest moment – just when the turbodiesel comes on song, the gearbox wanders in, spending an eternity asking whether you’d like it to change up and then delivering a huge jerk of torque long after the overtaking opportunity’s gone. It’s particularly bad when pulling out of junctions, delivering a pause Jeremy Clarkson would be proud of at precisely the point.... ....when you don’t want it.

It’s not that I’m anti-auto, as I’m now on my second car equipped with a ‘slush box’, but this particular system was definitely the weakest link on a great package, hindering the whole of the car with its dim-witted demeanour. Happily, there is a manual mode on the PowerShift system which works very effectively, but that defeats the point of having an expensive, self-shifting transmission at your disposal. 

If you’re the sort of frustrated mum or dad who needs a family wagon capable of conveying seven but secretly wants a car that’s fun to drive, then by all means go out and look at an S-Max. Just make sure it’s a manual.