Mini prices Paceman from $35,900

THE Mini Paceman coupe-SUV will be priced from $35,900 plus on-road costs when it hits Australian showrooms in March with a choice of two petrol-powered variants, the base Cooper and the sporty Cooper S ($44,100).

A hot John Cooper Works version of the related four-door Mini Countyman has also quietly slipped onto price lists at $56,800, while the JCW Paceman is expected to arrive here around mid-year.

As predicted by GoAuto in November last year, the Paceman commands a premium over the Countryman – but the Paceman sweetens the $1800 pill with a boosted standard specification.

Extras over the equivalent Countryman include sports suspension, sports seats, automatic headlights and wipers and chrome interior highlights.

Further differentiating the Paceman’s four-seat interior is a two-part centre rail separating the rear passengers, to which various storage and entertainment add-ons can be attached.

Mini has also finally relocated the electric window switches from the dashboard centre stack to the door panels for the Paceman.

Other standard features on the Cooper variant include 16-inch alloy wheels, ambient lighting, a multi-function sports steering wheel, Bluetooth telephony and USB interface.

Naturally the Cooper S expands on this with 17-inch black alloys, clear indicator lenses, stainless steel pedals and a sport button on the dashboard that makes the car more reactive to driver inputs.

Behind the rear seats is a 330-litre boot – 20 litres smaller than the flatter-roofed Countryman – and luggage capacity can expand to 1080 litres with the seats folded.

Beneath the bonnet is a 1.6-litre engine that in naturally aspirated Cooper format produces 90kW of power and 160Nm of torque, providing a 10.4-second 0-100km/h time and combined fuel consumption at 6.5 litres per 100 kilometres.

The hotter Cooper S adds a twin-scroll turbocharger to the same engine, boosting power to 135kW and torque to 240Nm for 0-100km/h in a swifter 7.5 seconds while using just 0.1L/100km more fuel.

Those figures are for cars fitted with the standard six-speed manual transmission, while the six-speed automatic (a $2350 option) blunts 0-100km/h performance to 11.5s on the Cooper and 7.8 on the Cooper S while increasing thirst by around 1.0L/100km on both variants.

When the flagship JCW performance Paceman arrives around the middle of this year, it will share the Countryman JCW’s 160kW/280Nm tweaked Cooper S engine, for 0-100km/h in a sprightly 6.9 seconds, and cost around $58,500.

Other than the larger, more expensive Range Rover Evoque – which is similarly more expensive for the two-door coupe bodystyle – the Paceman will enter the market without any direct competitors.

For this reason Mini Australia product communications manager Scott Croaker told GoAuto it was difficult to predict how popular the Paceman will be in Australia.

“We are hoping to grow our sales incrementally but we are not expecting a mad rush of brand new customers into Mini but we would like to think the Paceman creates some interest,” he said.

Mr Croaker agreed sales would most likely fall between the Countryman (516 units in 2012) and Coupe/Roadster (143 units).

Mini sales were up 4.5 per cent last year, with 2394 units registered.

A 11.1 per cent drop in Hatch and Clubman wagon sales was offset by a 29.4 per cent increase in Cabrio sales, a 20.6 per cent boost in Countryman sales and 143 sales of the Coupe and Roadster that were launched last year.

2013 Mini Paceman pricing*

Cooper Paceman	$35,900
Cooper S Paceman	$44,100

*Plus on-road costs