My fellow Countryman

insists on calling a �club door�, which has received a lot of flak in the British media. You see, despite this insistence from cool Britannia Blairites that Galliano and Keira Knightley came from the UK , there�s still that nationalistic element that surfaces each time Jeremy Clarkson makes a joke about Germans. Then it�s all suddenly pomp, circumstance and Penelope Keith.    The extra door, it is said, is on the wrong side, for the Empah. And any part of the former Empah that drives on the correct (left) side of the road. Egress for young children is made more dangerous because of the �club door� being on the right-hand side. But what makes the British truly indignant is that this device is one of those Continental things, you see, with no place in the Empah, like salami, or Sauerkraut, or some garlic-ridden muck.    In practice, as I discovered, no one seemed to care about the door. For starters, as my transport at Miss New Zealand, driving runner-up Hannah Matthews, her Mum and her aunt home, they simply assumed, as anyone of a certain age, that the Mini is a two-door car, and the first reaction was to put the passenger seat forward. Even after being made aware of the �club door�, they still got out on the pedestrian side.    The spare door was really for me. Accustomed to two-door cars anyway, I welcomed the chance to dump my stuff on the back seat when needed without having to fold the front seat forward. In practice, the wee door works.    The other criticism from the British press was the restriction on the view to the rear. Anyone who can remember the Austin Mini Countryman and the Morris Mini Traveller will remember that the back doors open up like barn doors, so there is a pillar in the centre.    Again, in the age of massive headrests in most cars, I never really noticed these being a hindrance. Not even Kate Moss is anorexic enough to be obscured by the pillar. The only thing British that could be hidden by the pillar is Pete Doherty�s self-respect, and you usually require a psychic medium to detect that.    The interior is oh-so-retro-fashionable Mini with the big speedometer in the centre, which from a design perspective seems superfluous because bmw has put in a digital readout in the middle of the rev counter in front of the driver that has the speed. But it�s a detail for the Ministi, along with dashboard-mounted switches for the electric windows.    I normally dislike retro in cars but I seem to tolerate this, and the absence of steering wheel-mounted radio controls, because it�s a Mini. The dna of stealing $4 million through a traffic jam using three Minis in The Italian Job was still there. I began singing along with Matt Monro, �On Days Like These�.    If there was a disappointment, it was really how darned sensible this car was. You do feel the extra length subconsciously, and that meant you held back on really joining Charlie Croker et al and pretend that the exit to Gillies Avenue is really to the sewers of Torino.    For all its front-end bravada, the Mini Cooper S Clubman is easy to drive and can, unless you stick it into sport mode, make so much sense as a round-town compact car.    I don�t predict it will steal sales from other cutesy motors like the Fiat 500 or the phony Volkswagen New Beetle, but from the Toyota