2017 MINI Countryman Spied for the First Time

When MINI unveiled the Countryman back in 2010, most of the audience was disappointed in what BMW did with the British brand. Apart from those people that were actually, genuinely excited about the first four-door MINI, the old-school fans deemed it immediately a ‘freak’.

Fast forward to 2014 and things are a bit different. The market is taking a liking in the biggest car the British brand ever made and good sales prompted BMW to start working on a new model that will be launched somewhere in 2017.

Just like all the other models in the works over in Berlin that use the front axle to power the car, the upcoming Countryman will be built on the UKL platform. That’s going to be shared with up to six new models from BMW and eight from MINI.

That’s also telling us what kind of engines this new car will have and yes, you guessed it, they will be part of the B-family of units. 1.5-liter and 1.2-liter units can be expected with 3-cylinder architecture and turbochargers to match. However, 2-liter, 4-cylinder plants will also be used on Cooper S models.

It’s a bit too soon to talk about the design of the car though. As you can see, the prototype our spy photographers caught testing looks a bit bigger than the current cars and has plenty of camouflage on it to hide all the essential bits and pieces from the naked eye.





All we can say about it is that things look to be evolving to an even bigger proposition, one that gets dangerously close to the X1. However, the two won’t be rivals in any way, the BMW Group not allowing it to go that far. The MINI will still appeal to those looking for a more non-conventional design while the Bimmer will be going for the more conservative of the customers out there.

The biggest changes could come inside, where the engineers will be striving to make more room without interfering with the exterior size too much. Furthermore, some of the fancy, futuristic-looking details seen on the Clubman Concept could be showing up on the Countryman too.


Full article and more pics here.