Automobile provides a long term update on its MINI Cooper S Countryman All4. Automobile's editor Jean Jennings and her husband Tim joined Automobile writer Joe Lorio on a trip in the Countryman from Ann Arbor, Michigan to New York City and New Jersey and back. The Jennings decide:
Although the Jennings were pleased overall with the Countryman as road-trip machine, they did have their criticisms, chiefly with the interior design details.
"I'm not a fan of the giant central gauge. It forces all of the other controls to be jammed together in miniature underneath it, where they become partly obscured by the shifter.
"I know I would eventually get used to the seat heater buttons, and they aren't really important in the greater scheme of things (as critical as they are to snowbound Michiganders), but very hard to get used to their in-out actuation. Very clunky. Clunkier still are the vertical rotary dials controlling fan and temperature -- they're too low and stiff for comfortable use and extremely annoying."
