What is an SUV? If you take it at its simplest form, it’s supposed to be a vehicle that’s used for sport and utility as a model that’s built with a versatile cabin, can head off-road with the capability you want, while offering you the dependability to be a daily driver. In the early days, an SUV was built as a box on frame model that appeared to be nothing more than a pickup truck that took away the bed in favor of another row of seats and a bit of cargo space in the rear to be the model that was able to go anywhere.

Over the years, the SUV models have been built on car platforms and gone away from truck platforms to be called crossover models that are more comfortable on the road. The older models were certainly capable but could be rough on you as you head out for the day. With the smoother driving of the car platforms paired with the efficiency improvement, we’ve seen a ton of models that are smaller than they were in the past but still offer the capability to give us the drive that we’ve been searching for.

The Transition to Reality

In the early days of the SUV, if you had said the MINI brand was going to build one, you would truly be witnessing the definition of an oxymoron. Now, with the smaller crossover models we see today, it’s not such a stretch at all. In fact, the new crossover that MINI has planned for the 2021 model year will be the second one built by the brand. This new model will be similar in size to the Countryman and will ride on a new platform to give us something new to look forward to from this brand.

This new platform will eventually be what we see across the entire lineup and it will be used to accommodate the electric powertrains we’re looking forward to from this brand. Eventually, the MINI brand may be one that offers us nothing more than EV models in the US as the brand looks to be the choice of city dwellers around the country. This would be the brand from the BMW team that would compete with the Smart brand that has discontinued gasoline-powered vehicles in the US and Canada to be a more direct choice for those that spend their time in the cities.

An EV crossover would be more versatile and capable from the MINI brand than what we see from Smart and might be the right step and a reason the team is using this new platform. While we don’t know the name of the new model or exactly what it will be for us to enjoy, you can bet it will carry some of the unique and highly recognizable styles that MINI has become known for. This new SUV from MINI is no longer an oxymoron but will be a model we look forward to and want to enjoy when it’s time to drive.