The Mini Cooper Clubman is rumored to be living on borrowed time, and the final model will be built roughly a year from now. According to the Mini fan website, MotoringFile, the last Clubman will be built in the first quarter of 2024. The publication also believes the final production month will be February 2024.
Mini apparently has no plans to keep the Clubman alive, so it will be killed off entirely after two generations. As you'd expect, the reason given for this culling is the Countryman, or rather, crossovers and SUVs in general. There's also a general dislike of wagons, and the Clubman is one, albeit a far smaller one than many remember growing up with.
In many ways, it was the only Mini that remained a miniature version of a particular body style. But its unique styling was apparently not enough to keep it alive; we have a love-hate relationship with the JCW Clubman in particular.
To understand the death of the model better, we need to look back at historical sales figures. BMW lumped the Clubman in with the rest of the Cooper sales figures, which also include the Hardtop 2 Door, Hardtop 4 Door, and Convertible.
There is historical data for the Clubman, however. It reached peak sales of 12,203 units when the new model hit the States in 2016. Since then, the average dropped consistently until 2021, when only 1,970 units were sold.
During the same timeframe, Mini sold 12,198 units of the Countryman, a slow year for Mini's SUV. The Countryman is also nearing the end of its life and will be replaced with an even bigger Countryman, confirming that buyers are averse to smaller and lower vehicles when bigger and taller are available.
It's also possible the Clubman is not needed anymore. We've seen images of the upcoming Mini Aceman EV thanks to the automotive paparazzi. It's a four-door EV, reportedly around 144 inches long. That's a long way off the Clubman's 168 inches, but the Aceman rides on an electric skateboard, which means more interior room.
BMW referenced this when it introduced the Aceman concept, stating that the platform would result in a car with a smaller footprint without having to sacrifice interior versatility.
Even though the rumors of the Clubman's death are as-yet unsubstantiated, they seem likely to be confirmed when examining Mini's recent actions. It reintroduced the manual gearbox for the Cooper and Cooper Convertible, and the Clubman was not included on the list, even though it shares a platform and engines with these models.
Unfortunately, the Clubman only appeals to die-hard Mini fans, so if that's you, hurry up. The Mini John Cooper Works Clubman, which is the one you want and is already only available in limited numbers, starts at $43,250, excluding delivery.
